The Story Teller of the Desert—"Backsheesh!" / or, Life and Adventures in the Orient

by Thomas Wallace Knox

CHAPTER XXXIX—ADVENTURES WITH A DONKEY.—A DAY AT THE RACES.

A “Syce” what is he?—A Man with a Queer Dress and Large Calves—A Gorgeous Turnout—An Escort of Eunuchs—Veiled Beauties—A Flirtation and its Consequences—The Tale of a Dropped Handkerchief—The Donkey as a National Beast—A Tricky Brute and an Agile Driver—An Upset in the Mud—Astonishing the Natives—A Specimen of Arabic Wit—Going to the Races—The Grand Stand—A Dromedary Race—An Aristocratic Camel—The Arrival of the Khedive—Starting Up the Dromedaries—Cutting an Empress.

A STRANGER is impressed during his first days in Cairo with the spectacle of runners in front of carriages to warn people to get out of the way. These fellows have a picturesque dress and muscular legs, and their duty is to clear the way, by keeping a few yards in advance and warning people that a carriage is coming. An appendage of this sort is called a syce, and formerly it was necessary that he should be a native born Egyptian, but at present a Nubian may aspire to the position, and it is not unusual to see syces of the complexion of charcoal in front of elegant carriages. Public fiacres and ordinary private carriages have each but a single syce, but the carriages of the Khedive and all official turnouts must have a pair of syces running side by side.

The syce carries a stick, which he holds perpendicularly in the air. As he goes along he warns people by his shouts; it occasionally happens that a crowd of common Arabs will be in the way with their donkeys, and if they do not move at the vocal admonition, the stick is brought into use with no savor of mildness. The most gorgeous turnouts in Cairo were, of course, those belonging to the reigning family, and used on state occasions. The Khedive ordinarily rides with very little display; he has a two-horse carriage, open or closed according to the weather or other circumstances, two syces in front and two outriders or household guards behind him.

The carriages of the harem are quite as gorgeous as his, and they have the additional escort of one or two eunuchs, sometimes on horseback, and at others seated on the box with the driver. Sometimes the blinds are drawn, and again they are open, but in either case the face of the fair occupant cannot be seen, as it is invariably covered with a veil.

The eyes only are visible and they are generally pretty, I think I may say invariably so, and have that soft, melting languor for which the Orient is famous. Concealment has its advantages here as elsewhere; what we can see is rarely as beautiful as what we do not see. The unattainable is always of more value than what is within our reach. Possibly all the women of the harem are not beautiful, but I had the word of a lady who has been in the sacred enclosure, that there are faces there whose beauty is rarely equalled in the Occident, and there was one that roused my informant to a pitch of enthusiasm more appropriate for a young and ardent man.

Some of these carriages of the harem have been associated with scandals of a mediocre character. I was told of one whose occupant used to drop her veil to a dashing young officer when promenading on the Shoobra Road, and on one occasion let fall an embroidered and perfumed handkerchief, which he picked up and retained.

As the story goes, he was imprudent enough to speak of the adventure and to show the trophy, and one day he was told his presence was no longer needed in the Egyptian army, but that his resignation would be accepted. How much truth there is in the story I cannot say, I am sure; I was not present; never saw officer or handkerchief to my knowledge, and neither have I ever seen the veiled beauty. But who among us would have neglected to peep at her face if he had the opportunity?

The beast par excellence of Egypt is the donkey; he ought to have a place on the national coat-of-arms, as much so as the llama has on that of Peru. The horses of Egypt are magnificent, some of pure Arabian, and some of a cross between English and Arabian stock, and are famous for their speed and beauty. But they are a luxury that not everybody can afford, as their support requires a constant outlay, not to speak of the first cost of the property. But the donkey is universal, and everybody can have one, unless he is the poorest of the poor.

At every hotel door there are groups of them ready saddled at all hours of the day, and you can hire them cheaply. If you can make a bargain in advance you can hire a donkey at three or four francs a day, inclusive of the boy, to drive him, though the latter generally looks for backsheesh in addition to the price of the beast and saddle. I have hired donkeys frequently for half

a franc an hour, though the hotel keepers tell you that a franc an hour is the proper fare.

Most of the excursions in and around Cairo must be made on these animals, and even in many places where you can take a carriage the donkey is preferable. You can ride in the narrow lanes and among the bazaars, or you can go into the open country at a gallop, as though pursued by a wolf, or a guilty conscience. No matter how fast you go, the boy will keep up with you, and he never seems to be out of breath. If you want to go slowly he does not understand you, and will continue to cluck and strike the beast at the very moment you are expostulating with him.

One day I took a donkey for an afternoon ride to old Cairo, and explained to the boy that I was in no hurry, and wished to go gently. “I understand,” he said, and as we started he hit the donkey a violent blow, that sent him off on a gallop.

Two or three times I expostulated, and finally I threatened to thrash him with my cane if he struck the donkey again without orders.

“I understand,” he said, “no strike donkey no more,” and we were off again.

Within two minutes he struck the animal. The promised thrashing was administered, and even that was not enough to make the boy mindful of what I wanted, and several times he involuntarily hurried the animal ahead. It was the force of habit, which to him was perfectly uncontrollable.

The donkey is a patient beast; he never kicks or runs away, never takes fright, never asks for backsheesh, and he can bear a burden that seems out of all proportion to his size. He does not get drunk or stay away from home by circumstances which he cannot control, and he can be boarded and lodged at a very cheap rate. His food consists of beans and chopped straw, with an occasional bonne bouche of fresh cut grass, of which you see great loads coming daily into the city on the backs of camels and donkeys.

The pace of the donkey is a walk, an amble, or a gallop according to circumstances, and at whatever speed he is going he is generally as easy as a cradle. The natives ride without stirrups, owing to the donkey’s tendency to stumble; he does not fall very often, but you never know when he will go down in a heap under you, and he is most likely to do this when at full speed, the very time when you least relish this sort of business.

When I reached Cairo I was not up to the dodge of riding without my feet in the stirrups, but I soon concluded that I had better learn. One afternoon I had a donkey that was very good, from a progressive point of view. There was a party of us, and we went at a gallop, and my beast was ahead most of the time. Suddenly he went down, very much as a wet towel falls on the floor when you drop it from your hand, and I went down like another wet towel when it is not dropped but flung into a corner.

Had my feet been out of the stirrups they would have touched the ground as I fell, and I should have been standing erect and dignified, and could have contemplated my donkey in a heap as Xerxes contemplated the remains of his fleet at Salamis. But I was comfortably fixed in the stirrups, and so I went forward and turned about eleven-sixteenths of a somersault before I settled into a sprawling position on and in the sand, to the great delight of the multitude who are never happier than when seeing a stranger make an ass of himself. I got up and found myself uninjured, though I presented the appearance of having been used as a street sweeping machine.

You may think this is drawing the donkey business to a considerable length, but you wouldn’t think so if you knew what a prominent place the animal has in the life and locomotion of modern Egypt. But through fear of wearying you, I will stop now; only let me tell you of the wit of one of the drivers.

One day I hired a donkey for a franc to make a journey for which the driver demanded three francs at the outset. When the bargain was concluded we started, but the beast was very slow, and I said to the driver that his steed was not good.

“Yes, donkey good,” was his reply. “Give donkey three francs, he good donkey; he no good for one franc.”

Soon after my arrival we had the pleasure of attending the horse races and noticing some of the peculiarities of the country.

The track for the Cairo races is two or three miles out of the city, on a large plain to the right of the Abooseer Road.

We left our donkeys in charge of their drivers, and bought tickets for the Grand Stand. The spectators were a mixed lot of natives and Europeans, nearly all the former being in European dress, with the exception of the fez or red cap, which covers the head at all times, whether in doors or out. A good many eunuchs were there and mingled freely with the crowd in and around the stand. They were nearly all tall—some of them unusually long in the legs—were clad a la European, and were rather gorgeous in the matter of watch chain. One who stood near me had a double length vest chain, a fob chain, and a chain around his neck. If there had been any other way of wearing a chain I presume he would have adopted that also.

Many of these neutral gentlemen were active in the discussion of the races; some of them made considerable wagers, and one of them, taller and rather older than the rest, appeared to exercise considerable authority over the jockeys, and superintended their mounting and weighing. The jockeys were of all colors and nationalities; there were English, French, and Italian jockeys; and there were Arab, Egyptian, and Nubian jockeys. There was comparatively little betting over the result, and quite an absence of the yelling and hooting heard at all races in England and at some in America.

Just before the commencement of the races, a dozen carriages came upon the ground, bringing the ladies of the harem. A separate space was assigned to them; in this space the carriages were driven and a rope was drawn around, and guards were stationed to keep out intruders.

The ladies remained all the time in their carriages, and as they were closely veiled and the blinds of the carriages were partially closed, nobody got a peep at them. It is quite an innovation for them to come to the races at all; the seclusion of the women of the Orient is so great that a man would usually be as likely to think of taking his dog to see an entertainment as of taking his wives, or any one of them. I believe the day is not far distant when the ladies of Egypt will discard the veil and go with uncovered faces like their Occidental sisters. The Khedive has done much in the way of assimilating his people with those of Europe, and he will do more as time goes on.

On the second day the affair opened with a race of dromedaries. Four of these animals were entered, but only three put in an appearance. They were not beautiful beasts; I don’t believe one of them, in his wildest moments, ever imagines that he is handsome, and he ought not to do so if he sets himself down to tame deliberation. The dromedary is a sort of fine edition of the camel; he bears the same relation to a camel that a setter or terrier bears to that “yaller” dog of America. He kneels to be | mounted, and he starts off at a swinging pace, arching his neck rather gracefully, and not appearing to be in a hurry.

The saddle for racing is a sort of hollow dish, in which the rider sits. He does not straddle the beast as we would mount a horse, but he sits in this trough, or dish, and crosses his legs in front of him. His place is not an uncomfortable one, except that it is pretty high in the air and a fall from it would be no joke. Since I saw that race I have done some camel travelling, and have my opinions, but of that I will speak by and by.

These three dromedaries started off very well at the word of command, and went around the track at the rate of twelve miles an hour, though they did not appear to be doing half as much.

The dromedary race did not begin until after the arrival of the Khedive, who came in a carriage with his sons and some of his ministers, and was accompanied by a dozen or so of riders, and there was a good deal of bowing and hat lifting, but there were no cheers. Cheering after the Western plan does not seem to be in vogue in Egypt, and certainly it would not take well with the dignified demeanor of the Orient.

The Khedive acknowledged the compliment by a bow to the right and the left as he entered the grounds, and the carriage moved rapidly to the stand set apart for him and his friends. On the stand he mingled unceremoniously with the rest of the party. Among them there was one lady, the Duchess of Parma, to whom he was courteously polite. Quite a contrast, this, I thought to the conduct of the Sultan, whom I saw in 1867, at Paris, rudely walk past the Empress without offering his arm or even speaking to her. She was a woman and an Infidel Christian; no one could expect the commander of the Faithful to be polite to her.

There are different ways of regarding the subject from our standpoint; we think that Mohammedanism degrades woman below her proper level, by secluding her and by treating her not as a companion of man, but as a thing for his amusement, or for the perpetuation of the human race, as the soil is made to perpetuate the fruits of the earth. And the Mohammedan looking at us thinks that we raise women above their proper level and allow them too much part in our affairs. But the Western theory is yearly gaining more adherents, and the position of woman is yearly becoming more exalted. And the enlightened ruler of Egypt is the first Mohammedan Prince or King who has ventured to show in public a feeling of respect toward the gentler and prettier half of humanity.

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CHAPTER XL—THE PASHA AND THE PRIESTS.—EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE—SCHOOLS AND RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES.

Egypt and her relations with Turkey—The Army and Navy—Egyptian history boiled down—The reigning family—Wonderful Relics—Mohammed Ali as a ruler—The Pasha and the priests—Ordering a Wedding—Married on short notice—Gratifying the Empress Eugenie—An Arab school-room—A college with nine thousand students—A jaw-breaking language—How to indite an epistle in Arabic—The caravan to Mecca—Going on a pilgrimage—A horrible ceremony—Trampling on dervishes—The “Bride of the Nile”—Extraordinary customs.

EGYPT is sufficiently independent to have a government of her own, and to maintain a standing army. She pays an annual tribute to Turkey of half a million pounds sterling, but the amount varies somewhat, according to circumstances. In return for this tribute she is allowed to do pretty much as she pleases in the way of contracting loans and making internal improvements. The army is restricted to fifteen thousand men, but by means of an arrangement for short terms of service it is practically four or five times as large. The organization of the army is very much on the European model, and the troops are drilled according to the modern systems of tactics.

The artillery arm of the service has been made as effective as possible, and the batteries consist of breech-loading cannon, from Krupp’s manufactory in Germany. The navy is not large, but the ships that compose it are of the most approved construction and their armament is of steel breech-loaders, like the land batteries. The infantry are equipped with improved rifles, and the cavalry has a revolving carbine, with a removable stock, so that the weapons may be changed at will into a pistol or a rifle. In the last few years, the government has availed itself of the services of many foreign officers, the most of them from America. These are scattered among all branches of the service, the most of them being in the corps of engineers. Under their management the country is being carefully surveyed, and an elaborate map is in preparation.

Egypt has had a great many rulers. The dynasties of Kings of ancient Egypt were no less than thirty-four in number, and then came the Romans about the beginning of the Christian Era. They reigned for a few hundred years, then the country was conquered by the Arabs, and later on, it fell into the hands of the Turks. Near the end of the last century, it was invaded by the French, they remained about three years only, when they were expelled by the English, and soon after their arrival the renowned Mohammed Ali was made the ruling pasha.

He reigned from 1806 to 1848, when he became imbecile, and was succeeded by his son Ibrahim Pasha, who died after a reign of two months. Ibrahim was followed by his nephew Abbas Pasha who reigned from 1848 to 1854, and was succeeded by the fourth son of Mohammed Ali, under the name of Said Pasha. In 1863 Said was succeeded by the present ruler Ismail Pasha, second son of Ibrahim Pasha, the eldest having been drowned in the Nile in 1856.

There you have Egyptian history boiled down into a small space. I have not thought any reader would care to know the names of all the kings of Egypt from Menes, five thousand years before Christ, to Ismail nearly two thousand years after Christ.

Some were jolly old fellows, who lived as luxuriously as they knew how, though I dare say, none of them ever tasted raw oysters on the shell, or prairie chicken broiled and on toast. They used to dress rather elaborately, and they built some magnificent temples and tombs, which still remain to be wondered at by modern mortals.

No construction of the present day can begin to compare with them in grandeur, but of this I shall have more to say by and by. The kings were buried with great care, but their tombs have been plundered in modern times, so that very little of the royal relics can be found.

Occasionally they stumble on something and it is at once put into the museum at Cairo. Through the kindness of the director of this museum I was one day allowed to hold in my hand the heart of one of the most famous of the warrior kings of the XIXth Dynasty. It wasn’t much of a heart, a dried and bandaged affair of little consequence, but it was no common occurrence to grasp it, and remember that it once beat beneath the breast of a great warrior, who lived and loved, and ruled and died, three thousand years ago.

Nearly all the modern greatness of Egypt is due to her present ruler. Mohammed Ali, was a man of great ability, and under his rule the country received an impetus in the right direction. He founded schools, dug canals, and did many things for the prosperity of the country, and when he had determined to act in a certain direction, he didn’t allow himself to be thwarted. At one time he had decided to widen the Mooskee, now the principal street of the old part of Cairo, and was about to begin work when the Moslem priests interfered and declared they would bring anathemas upon him if the design was not relinquished.

He ordered the contumacious fellows arrested, and threatened to decapitate them unless they behaved themselves, They were in no hurry to be ushered into the presence of Mohammed the Prophet, and so they yielded to Mohammed the Ruler.

This recalls the story of Peter the Great, when he founded St. Petersburg and compelled the priests to bring the bones of one of the saints from their resting place at Vladimir. The priests did not like the new location, and one day they took the bones and started off for Vladimir, declaring that the ghost of the departed had told them to do so. Peter sent after them, with the threat of making ghosts of all of them, unless they returned, and they did return, bones and all. There is nothing like having a will of your own, and the power to use it.

The Khedive is like his grandfather in many things, and is not easily thwarted when he has made up his mind to anything. He is a liberal ruler, and believes in the enterprise and progress of the Occident, rather than in the slow coach system of the Orient. Though a Mohammedan he is no bigot, as is shown by the perfect freedom accorded to all religions, and by his personal gift of land to any Christian society that wishes to build a church.

He has a difficult position to occupy, as he is a Mohammedan and ruler of Mohammedans; when he comes in contact with any of the prerogatives of the religion, he is obliged to devise a course that shall keep the religion inviolate. For example he wishes to abolish slavery and to destroy the slave trade, but here he comes in contact with the Koran, which permits the ownership of human property.

He sends an army into the regions of the Upper Nile, and destroys the business of kidnapping and the importation of slaves; he cannot liberate the slaves now held in Egypt, but he orders that when a slave runs away the machinery of the law shall not be used for his recapture. Any slave in Cairo may run away, and be safe from arrest; owners and slaves are aware of this state of things, and consequently the owners treat their slaves so well that they are not inclined to run away. I was told that slaves were generally better treated than free laborers. This state of affairs was not unknown in some parts of our own border states previous to our civil war.

As an illustration of the power of the Khedive over his subjects, I will mention an incident which was narrated to me.

When the Empress Eugenie was in Egypt she expressed a desire to witness an Egyptian wedding. The Khedive summoned an officer of his staff, and told him to be ready to be married the next day.

One of the ladies attached to the harem was designated as the bride, and the wedding came off in grand style, to the delight of the Empress and of all concerned. His Highness paid the bills and set up the couple in good style, including the present of a house, where the Empress paid them a congratulatory visit.

An Arab school is a curiosity. The pupils study their lessons aloud, and make the place about as noisy as a political meeting, and how they can learn, any thing is a surprise to a person from the Occident, where silence is considered desirable in a school-room.

I looked repeatedly into these schools, and generally

knew where they were, at least half a minute before I reached their doors. The master squats on the floor at one side of the room, or stands among some of his pupils who are seated in rows or promiscuously through the rest of the apartment. Their lessons are given to them upon slates or large cards, and they sit rocking back and forth and studying aloud.

When they have committed a lesson, they go to the teacher and recite it, and if found perfect they receive another. The instruction consists of reading and writing, the latter generally including passages from the Koran.

Down to the time of Mohammed Ali, the schools of Egypt were not based upon any system; anybody who wished to to open a school could do so, and children were sent there and received on payment of a small fee. Under that ruler a public school system was established; it declined somewhat under his immediate successor, but has been revived and improved, to some extent, by the Khedive.

The schools are divided into civil and military, and the civil schools are subdivided into primary, secondary, and special.

In the primary schools, the pupils receive instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and in most of them some foreign language, generally French, is taught. When a certain proficiency is reached, the pupils enter the secondary schools, where they are instructed in Arabic, and may also study Turkish, French, and English. The Arabic course includes history, pure mathematics, geography, and drawing, and sometimes algebra and belles-lettres.

From these schools a pupil may be passed by examination into one of the special schools, which are five in number, as follows:

Land Surveying and Commercial School; Law School; Polytechnic School; Arts et Metiers School; and the Medical School.

The time required for study and graduation in these schools varies from two to four years each. The Medical School has a school of midwifery for women, and is the only institution for feminine education in Egypt. The military schools include every branch of military education; they are on the European model, and many of the professors are Europeans. Every Christian community in Cairo has its own schools, and some of them are quite large. There is an American mission school, and also an English one, and there are French, Greek, Armenian, and Coptic schools, so that the Christians are not likely to grow up in ignorance. Many of the mosques have free schools, and medresse, or colleges, attached to them.

The El Azhar mosque is the great college of Cairo, and also the principal university of the East. There are small porticoes, divided into apartments, for the use of natives from different parts of Egypt and the Orient, each province or country having a room to itself. The professors receive no salaries, but live upon presents from the pupils, and by copying books or performing other literary work. There are nine thousand students, and more than three hundred professors attached to this university! Nearly all the sciences taught in all the colleges of the globe have a place here.

Arabic is not an easy language to acquire to perfection, but I am told that one can learn to talk it fairly in about twice the time that it would take for learning a European language. In the short time that I was in Cairo I picked up a smattering, as I make it a rule to do in all countries where I expect to stay more than a month.

You will be astonished to find how far you can get along with a few words, if you only set about it in earnest. My Arabic was much like the English of some of the donkey drivers; there were no prepositions and conjunctions in it, and the construction of the verbs placed all the rules of grammar at defiance.

In fact, you can get along without many verbs when you are put to it. All you want is the name of the thing you are after, and the words for “how much.” Then you must have the numerals, and thus armed and equipped, you may set out on a shopping excursion with a brave heart, and a consciousness that every shop-keeper you deal with will cheat you if possible.

The Arabs begin to read a book where we would finish it, and they generally read from right to left, though not always. When they write they hold the paper in the left hand, and grasp a small stick in the right. This stick is sharpened to a point, like a pencil, and dipped in the ink, and with it the letters are formed with considerable rapidity. As in some of the cities of Europe, there are men whose profession it is to write letters for those unable to write, and you see these men squatted on the sidewalk, with paper, pen, ink and sand before them, ready for a customer. They have a peculiar kind of ink-stand in Cairo; it is made of brass, and has a long handle running back nearly a foot. This handle is hollow, and holds the pens, and it serves the purpose of sustaining the ink-stand in the girdle. The ink is generally a little thicker than ours, but they can write with European ink without trouble. You see these ink-stands very often in the girdles of merchants and accountants in the bazaars, and it is not unusual to see a man standing or squatting on the sidewalk, and engaged in the production of a letter. And the oddest thing of the whole business is to see him holding the paper in his hand; if you ask an Arab to sit at your desk to write a letter, the chances are fifty to one that he will pick up the paper instead of placing it on the flat surface, as is our invariable custom. In the government offices they have learned to write with the paper flat on the desk, but they do not take to it kindly.

I have seen a high official sit at his desk and pick up a document in order to affix his signature, and he continued to hold the paper until he had signed it and appended his seal. The seal is a very necessary part of the business; it is not put on with wax, but is stamped with ink.

Every year a caravan leaves Cairo for Mecca, and is accompanied by pilgrims to the birth-place of Mohammed. The march is through the desert, and consumes from sixty to eighty days, sometimes exceeding the latter number. The annual pilgrimage from all parts of the Mohammedan world is about seventy thousand, the number going by land is steadily decreasing, for the reason that one can now go by steamer to Djeddah, on the Red Sea, and from thence two or three days on foot will bring him to the Holy City. Steamers run regularly from Suez to Djeddah, and in the season of pilgrimage there are extra boats that carry deck passengers at a very low fare.

The departure of the annual caravan from Cairo is a scene of great pomp. A camel is designated to carry the Mahmal, or sacred canopy; it was originally designed to contain such of the wives of the Caliphs as wished to make the journey, but latterly it contains nothing, and has become simply a rich decoration, which ultimately finds a place in one of the mosques. Another camel carries the Kiswe Ji en nebbe, a quantity of rich silk, covered with sentences from the Koran, embroidered in letters of gold.

It is annually supplied from Cairo for lining the temple at Mecca; the old one is returned and cut into small bits for distribution among those of the faithful who are unable to make the pilgrimage.

The caravan starts from the Citadel, and there is generally a large crowd in attendance, to see it off. It has always been the custom for the reigning Viceroy or Caliph to witness the departure of the caravan, but for two years the Khedive has not been present in person. He has sent a deputy, in the shape of his son; the Viceroy or his deputy presents a purse of gold to the rider of the camel to pay the expenses of the journey, and, formerly, this purse was noted for its size and weight. It has grown small by degrees, and beautifully less, and the probability is that before many years, the presentation will cease altogether. The Khedive shows a most emphatic desire to put an end to the useless and expensive mummeries that have been handed down to him from the early days of Mohammedanism.

The return of the pilgrims is quite an event in Cairo, but not so great as the departure, for the reason that the caravan straggles a great deal, and the individual members are inclined to hurry to their homes with as little delay as possible. Formerly there was a suspension of labor and a grand festival, but at present there is little more than a procession of the returning pilgrims.

There is a much more disagreeable occurrence on the birthday of Mohammed, when the ceremony of the doseh is performed.

The word in Arabic means “treading,” and is descriptive enough as far as it goes. The return of the pilgrims from Mecca is arranged so that it falls near the anniversary of the Moolid en-Nebbe, or birthday of the Prophet. There are many festivities on this day which correspond to our Christmas; services are held in all the mosques, and those who can afford a good dinner and suit of clothes are sure to have them. There are ceremonies not only in the mosques, but on the streets. Dervishes go about with pins sticking through their flesh, or bearing heavy burdens, and show no signs of pain or fatigue.

Formerly there were dervishes who went about with coils of live serpents around them, and occasionally they amused the crowd by eating one of the snakes. This pleasant practice has been discontinued, partly for the reason that many over-sensitive people objected to it, and partly because the dervish stomach could not easily digest this irregular food. A man may eat a live snake, but I doubt if he is likely to “hanker after it” any more than the countryman in the “crow” story.

The public squares are filled with booths, swings, and other means of amusement, and there is always a dense crowd around them. Reciters of romance are numerous, and any person familiar with the language of the country may hear the tales of the Arabian Nights, or similar works of fiction, chanted in slow, measured accents, by men who have carefully committed them to memory. Formerly there were many Ghawasee, or dancing girls; their employments were not entirely confined to dancing, and their appearance in public has been forbidden by the authorities. There are frequent processions of dervishes, and at night the streets are hung with lanterns and otherwise made more gay than usual.

The ceremony of the Doseh takes place just after the noon prayers, and a great crowd is always gathered to witness it. The Sheik of the Saadeeyah dervishes passes the night and forepart of the day at the Mosque of Hassaneyn and devotes the time to the repetition of prayers and invocations which shall fit him for the ceremony. When all is ready he mounts a horse and sets out, accompanied by a numerous delegation of Moslems from various parts of the city. His horse is led by two men, and he proceeds at a walking pace.

At the spot selected for the performance some two or three hundred persons lie down in the street, closely wedged together so that they make a very fine imitation of a corduroy road. Their heads are all one way and resting upon their folded arms, and the crowd ranges close against them in a very compact hedge. Their backs are upward, and they mutter “Allah!”

“Allah!” without intermission while waiting the conclusion of the ceremony.

When the Sheik approaches this novel causeway his horse becomes restive, and refuses to go on, but he is pulled by the two men who hold the bridle and urged by those behind so that he does not hesitate a great while. But evidently he does not like his employment.

He ambles rather hastily over the human pavement, and toward the end he gives a jump that would break into a gallop were he not restrained by the man at his bridle. The fellows forming the pavement rise up the instant the horse passes over them, and join the crowd which presses from behind, with an irregular shout of “Allah! Allah!” and this is the ceremony of the dosch.

The Moslems insist that no harm comes to any one from the tread of the horse, as the dervishes are protected by the direct interposition of Providence. Each person receives at least two treads from the horse’s feet, and in addition he has the gentle footsteps of the two men leading the horse. One of these worthies walks on the heads and the other on the feet of the prostrate forms, and they endeavor to give everybody a show. They take short steps so that nobody shall be missed, and between them and the horse, the corduroy performers ought to be satisfied. Whether from motives of delicacy or out of regard for the animate soil on which they tread, these grooms walk barefooted, and carry their shoes in their hand. It is also worthy of remark that the horse ridden by the Sheik is of medium size, and wears no shoes, and the Sheik is always a small man. In having a miracle wrought before the eyes of the people, the Moslem priests are careful to make the conditions as easy as possible. They might select a horse of the largest size, have him freshly and sharply shod and ridden by a Sheik whose weight would entitle him to the Presidency of the Fat Men’s Association. But they know what they are about, and do nothing of the sort.

I have talked with Moslems and other residents of Cairo about the dosch. The former insist that the prostrate men are saved by a miracle, while the latter believe that more or less harm comes every year to the performers, and is concealed by the rush of the crowd from behind. Any cry of pain that may be uttered is completely drowned by the shouts of the crowd; the horse steps on that portion of the body which is very useful in occupying a chair, and can sometimes be kicked with impunity, and it is possible that his feet have no lasting impression.

At any rate not a shriek is heard, and no one is ever known by the public to have been injured. The dead and wounded, if any, are dragged away and kept out of sight, and so great is Eastern stoicism, that not one of those trampled on will venture to give utterance to his pain, as by so doing he would lose the protection of Allah; and be denied admission within the gates of Paradise!

When the Nile has reached a certain height during the period of the inundation, there is a ceremony of cutting the embankment and allowing the water to spread over the land. This was formerly an affair of great consequence; its origin is unknown, as the custom existed in the time of the Pharaohs, and among the earlier dynasties. The place selected is at the opening of the canal, a short distance from old Cairo, and formerly nearly half the population turned out to see the performance. At the appointed hour the Governor of Cairo, or a deputy of the Pasha, makes his appearance, accompanied by a gorgeous retinue of officers, and preceded by a band of music. When all is ready half a dozen men rush forward and open the embankment with hoes and spades, and instantly the water rushes in and fills the bed of the canal. The governor then throws a handful of money into the canal, and this is scrambled for by a crowd of boys, who stand ready for it.

Tradition says that formerly a virgin was thrown into the water and sacrificed to the river god, but the custom no longer prevails, at least, in its original form. A pillar of earth is built up just below the opening, and dressed in white, and this is supposed to represent the Bride of the Nile. Sometimes a doll is thrown into the water, as a substitute for the living girl formerly sacrificed; whether the River God is satisfied with this offering, I am unable to say, but as the fertility of the Nile Valley is the same from year to year, it is fair to presume that the sacrifice by proxy does not displease him.

There are several other ceremonies at Cairo, but they are steadily declining in importance as year after year rolls on. The government is becoming more and more practical, with each succeeding change of seasons, and as the government goes the people follow. Cairo was once a stronghold of Islam; to-day it has ceased to be a reliance of the Moslem power, and probably the end of the century will see it far more Christian than Mohammedan in character. It has ceased to be a center of fanaticism, and a Christian may now walk through all its streets without fear of insult on account of his religion.

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CHAPTER XLI—THE GREAT PYRAMIDS.—IN THE KINGS’ BURIAL CHAMBERS.

A Visit to the Great Pyramids—A Fellah not a Fellow—Sakkiehs and Shadoofs—A File of Camels and Donkeys—A striking Spectacle—A horde of Arabs—Troublesome Customers—The Great Pyramid—How we climbed it—A Giant Stairway—Dimensions Extraordinary—The lost Arts—Standing on the Summit—The Judge’s Predicament—Arab Cormorants—What we saw from the top of the Great Pyramid—Wonderful Contrasts—Performance of an Arabian Acrobat—A race down the Pyramid Stairs—A perilous Descent—Penetrating the Interior—The King’s Chamber—A dusty Receptacle of Coffins—The Sphinx—A mysterious Statue.

EVERY visitor to Cairo makes at least one journey to the famous pyramids of Gizeh, and generally takes an early opportunity to make it. Until within a few years there was considerable labor and fatigue to the excursion as it was necessary to ride there on donkeys, and the whole trip required not less than five hours of saddle exercise. There was also the necessity of crossing the Nile on a ferry boat, and as there was generally a crowd of men, boys, camels, and donkeys at the ferry, the journey across had a reasonable amount of excitement in it. Now you ride to the Pyramids in a carriage and along a macadamized road, and you cross the Nile over an iron bridge that is a great improvement upon the ferry.

At my first visit we made up a party of twelve and therefore took three carriages for which we paid twenty francs each carriage, quite a reasonable price compared with hack fares in America.

We started about nine o’clock, after crossing the river found ourselves among the fertile fields that produce many of the vegetables consumed in Cairo. Fellahs were at work in these fields, some of them very scantily clad, particularly those who manipulated the sakkiehs or water lifters. A sakkieh is a very primitive machine and consists of a pole and bucket supported like the old fashioned well-sweep of America. The term sakkieh is applied to all the apparatus for raising water, but the proper name for the Egyptian pole and bucket is shadoof. The shadoof is very ancient, as it is represented on the walls of the tombs constructed three or four thousand years ago.

We met troops of camels and donkeys laden with green provisions for Cairo; the majority of them carried freshly cut grass for the sustenance of donkeys, horses, and camels, piled in great loads that half concealed the animals that bore them. The grass thus cut is sold quite cheaply, and as many as four or five crops can be taken from the land in the course of the year. The fertility of the Nile soil exceeds that of any land I have ever seen elsewhere; the lower Mississippi with all its richness is far behind it.

Although good roads have been provided here burdens are still carried almost entirely on the backs of animals, very few carts being in use. Almost the only vehicles visible here are the carriages of tourists going to or from the Pyramids or visiting one of the Khedive’s palaces. There is a fine palace on this side of the Nile known as the Gezereh, and there are two new palaces in course of construction. In spite of the tightened money market and the general absence of cash, the Khedive continues to make extensive outlays on palaces and their adornments. He has several sons, and it is desirable that each shall have a home of his own.

As we drive towards them the Pyramids fill the horizon, or rather they rise very prominently out of it. When we are yet an hour’s drive from their base they seem not more than ten minutes away, an optical delusion, partly attributable to the clear atmosphere and partly to the great size of the structures themselves. A house two stories in height stands at the foot of the first pyramid, and by observing what a slight speck it makes against the great mass you can form an idea of what is before

you. Long before we are near the Pyramids our carriage is surrounded by Arabs, bent on serving us in some way, or at all events in wringing money from us. They follow the carriage at a run and have no difficulty in keeping up with us. Most of them run bare-footed and keep their great clumsy shoes in their hands as the least fatiguing way of carrying the burdens.

At the edge of the fertile land the road ascends an elevation and here it is necessary for us to dismount and walk as the track is covered with sand that has blown from the desert and makes the ascent very difficult for a loaded vehicle. The horses have all they can do to take the empty carriage up the slope and the drivers are obliged to use the whip very freely.

We came to a halt on the broad open space below the Great Pyramid, and the drivers immediately removed and unharnessed their horses, and took out the poles of the carriages. The Arabs flocked around us to make bargains for the ascent; there are some thirty-five or forty that stay here to serve-travellers, and they have a fixed tariff for the ascent and the journey into the interior You pay two shillings to the sheik of the tribe for the ascent and two more if you go inside, and for this he furnishes you with two or more men to assist you. Half a dozen will volunteer to accompany you but two are quite enough.

A friend had told me what to do so I stipulated that only the two men to serve, me should come near me otherwise I should pay nothing. I required the sheik to select the two and away we started. A boy carrying a gargolet of water followed us, and I found him desirable and consented that he should accompany me. The unusual exertion gives one a dryness in the throat that it is well to alleviate occasionally.

The Great Pyramid is built on a rock platform, about a hundred feet above the level of the plain below; from a very early period, it was one of the cemeteries of Memphis, and at the present day the remains of tombs are scattered all around, most of them being buried in the sand. The stones for building the pyramid came from the other side of the Nile, and were ferried over in boats to the end of a causeway that was built to facilitate their transport to the place where they now lie.

As it now stands, the pyramid consists of a series of steps from two to four feet high, and very few of them are less than three feet. To make the ascent, you yield yourself into the hands of the two Arabs appointed to accompany you; they stand above, and lift you up by the arms, at the same time indicating where you are to place your feet.

Imagine a series of steps as high or higher than an ordinary dining-table or writing-desk.

And then remember that you must ascend on these steps a perpendicular height of four hundred and eighty feet.

Originally, when completed, the pyramid had a casing of granite and limestone fitted into these steps, so that an ascent was impossible. The casing has entirely disappeared, having been removed for building purposes in Cairo at the time of the Caliphs; on the second pyramid, part of the casing still remains, though, broken in places, and gives an idea of the beauty of the whole, before the work was injured.

And now a few figures; skip them if you like, and don’t say anything about them.

The great pyramid is seven hundred and forty-six feet long, and four hundred and eighty feet high. It covers an area of five hundred and thirty-six thousand square feet, or nearly thirteen acres. Its solid contents are calculated at eighty-five million cubic feet. How much do you suppose that is?

Well, you could build a wall four feet high and two feet thick, and something more than two thousand miles long, with the stones in this pyramid, or you could build a wall twelve feet high and four feet thick all the way from Cincinnati to St. Louis—a distance of three hundred and forty miles. And if you piled it up around Manhattan Island, where New York stands, you would encircle that metropolis with a wall twenty feet thick and forty feet high. And remember that all this stone was hewn from the quarries, and moved and piled up before the days of steam!

How were the pyramids built? That is a conundrum which many people have puzzled over, and nobody has been able to answer. The Egyptians have left nothing to indicate how they performed their work, and nobody has been able to devise a satisfactory explanation. Many men have theorized about the matter, and every time anybody builds up a theory the rest of them show that it was impossible to build the pyramids in that way. One of these days, something may be discovered to throw light upon the matter, but at present all is darkness.

All this time I have had you climbing up the northeast corner of the great pyramid, halting occasionally to take breath and a swallow of water, and a glance at the country around and below us. It is tough work for the muscles, to climb these high steps, but if you are patient and careful you will get along without much trouble.

In about fifteen minutes we are at the top, and the Arabs indulge in a hurrah as we get there. They pestered me on the way up to give them a personal fee, in addition to what I gave the sheik, and I promised it to them on condition that they should not allude to it again until they reached the base. The men I had were strong, healthy fellows, rather dignified in their bearing, and they spoke English, French, and Italian sufficiently well to be understood. They handled me without difficulty, and by making them understand what I wanted at the outset, and being firm with them, I had no trouble.

The Judge had so much bother with the Arabs, that he was rather disgusted with his visit. About a dozen of the fellows accompanied him, and gave him all sorts of assistance. Two pulled him up, and two pushed; one unwound his turban, and two others put it around the Judge’s waist in order to lift him.

Another carried his overcoat, another his cane, and another a bottle of water, and two or three others gave directions as to the proper places for his feet.

When he reached the top, they wanted some “backsheesh,” and he was injudicious enough to give it. This opened the ball, and they kept at him; and he gave away, there and at the base of the pyramid, something over twenty-five francs. Each man who pulled and each who pushed wanted something; the fellows who lifted at the turban wanted something, and the owner of the turban wanted something for the use of it; the man who carried his overcoat wanted something, and so did the cane-bearer and the water-bearer; then the other fellows wanted something, and after they had received something all around separately, they asked for a general fee in addition. You could no more satisfy these brigands with any ordinary lot of money, than you could bail out Lake Erie with a teaspoon.

Originally, the summit of the great pyramid was a point or very nearly so; it has been removed so that it is now about thirty feet square, some of the blocks resting higher than others. You can sit around them there very comfortably, but there isn’t much to see when you are there—that is, nothing very different from what you can see at the base. On the west is the desert, north is the rich delta of the Nile, east is Cairo, beyond the river and backed by the Mokattaw and other hills that fill the horizon, and south there is the valley of the Nile, opening between the double lines of desert on either side. There are no mountains to attract the eye with their varieties of color and jaggedness of outline; there are no lakes shining in the sunlight, and there is no glimpse of the ocean with its ever-beating waves.

The prettiest artificial features of the landscape are the walls and domes and minarets of Cairo, and the most salient natural features are the sharp contrast of valley and desert. There is no intermediate ground; at one place it is rich alluvium, and six inches away lies the arid sand. The one is a deep, rich green; the other is a greyish white, dazzling where it reflects the sun, and tinted with the faintest shade of purple where it does not. The one is the perfection of fertility, the most fecund spot of land on the globe; the other is bleak and utter sterility, with not the tiniest blade of grass or shred of lichen to relieve its desolation. Nature draws nowhere a picture of sharper contrasts.

Out from the deserts in the southern horizon comes the Nile, freighted with the mud which makes the wealth of Egypt. It is more than that—it is Egypt, and were it not for this river, the land of the Pharaohs, the Caliphs, and the Khedive would not exist. You can trace the river as it winds away through the Delta and separates into the branches and canals which enable it to distribute its blessings over a wide area There is no point where you can better realize how much the Nile is Egypt than when you look from the summit of the great pyramid.

While we were at the summit, an Arab proposed to run from where we stood to the top of the second pyramid in ten minutes, a feat which at first glance seemed impossible. We finally agreed to give him five francs if he would do it, and away he started. He jumped from block to block with the agility of a monkey, at about the rate that an able-bodied boy descends an ordinary staircase, when he is in a hurry to get something at the bottom. He ran across the space between the pyramids and up the other, but I observed that he made the ascent with less appearance of hurry than when descending the first. He made the journey in a little more than ten minutes, and I have heard of an Arab doing it inside of eight minutes.

This is one of the stock amusements of the trip to the pyramids, and I have a book, written thirty years ago, in which the same feat is mentioned.

We offered to give the whole crowd of Arabs five francs each if they would stand at the edge of the platform and then turn a somersault downwards and outwards; they were inclined to consider the matter at first, but one of them, after a moment’s thought, exclaimed, “It would kill us; we no do it.”

We explained that this was exactly what we wanted. The fellow laughed, and replied, “It do you no good; plenty more Arabs left. They come here and take our place, and they not good Arabs like us.”

We had nothing more to say.

In descending the pyramid, my two Arabs stepped ahead and took my hands as I jumped from step to step. I found it much easier than the ascent, as I had my weight, which is not that of a feather, to assist me.

There is a difference of opinion about the descent, some affirming that it is much worse than going up, while others are equally vehement in saying that it is much easier. It depends upon a

variety of personal circumstances, such as weight, age, condition of muscles and lungs, and upon the manipulations of the Arabs that have you in charge. The same conditions in every respect will not be found in any two persons.

In any event, unless much accustomed to climbing, you will have a realizing sense of weariness for the rest of the day, and when you attempt to rise next morning, and move your stiffened limbs, you can easily imagine yourself to be your own grandfather.

The great pyramid was built by Cheops, one of the kings of Memphis, who ruled about twenty-seven hundred years before Christ—some say nearly four thousand years—and was intended for his monument. Three hundred thousand men are said to have been employed twenty years upon its construction, and some authorities say it was not completed till after his death. When his mummy was ready, it was put inside the granite sarcophagus intended for it, and the entrance was carefully walled up and concealed. It remained thus closed for many centuries. In the year 820 of our era, one of the Caliphs of Cairo ordered a search for the opening, and it was finally discovered at quite a distance up from the ground on one side. Nothing of consequence was found there, and the Caliph was greatly disappointed, as he had expected a vast treasure which tradition said was concealed there.

It is quite as wearisome work to go inside as to climb to the top, and many persons think it is worse.

From the opening, you descend about sixty feet, at an angle of 26°, through a passage way three ft. five in. high, and three ft. eleven in. wide. Then, after a slight detour, you have an ascent at the same angle for nearly three hundred feet, some parts of it being quite low, and others expanding into a high gallery. At the end of this passage is the sepulchral vault known as the King’s Chamber, and containing nothing but an empty sarcophagus of red granite. The sides and roof of the chamber are of polished granite; the room measures thirty-four ft. by seventeen, and the height is a little over nineteen feet.

Below it, and reached by a horizontal gallery from the main entrance, is another apartment called the Queen’s Chamber, somewhat smaller than the upper one, and there are three or four other insignificant apartments whose use has not been clearly determined.

The passage by which we enter the pyramid continues three hundred and twenty feet downwards, at the same angle as at the commencement, and so straight is it that when you are at the lower end you can see the sky as if looking through the tube of a huge telescope. At the end of it there is a small chamber, and in this a well has been dug thirty-six feet, without finding any signs of water. The statement of Herodotus, that this chamber was filled by the inflow from the Nile, is probably on a par with other statements of this reliable gentleman.

Most travellers are satisfied with a very brief examination of the interior of the pyramid, and are glad to scramble out without delay. The heat is pretty high, the air is close, and the dust almost stifling. Then there are the smoke of the candles and the glare of the magnesium wire, used for lighting up the interior of the chambers, and the noise made by the Arabs, which is ten times worse than the same amount of din in the open air.

Formerly, they had a trick of frightening timid persons into the payment of heavy “backsheesh,” to secure a safe return to the outside, and not unfrequently they attempt the same thing now. Some persons have been very roughly handled by them, and on a few occasions they have verified the American proverb about waking up the wrong passenger.

Early this season, an Englishman and an American went together to visit the pyramid, and, while they were inside, the Arabs began to threaten them. One Arab was knocked senseless, and the others were told that they would have the same fate, if they did not instantly and safely take the strangers outside.

They obeyed, and when the outer air was reached were told that they would not receive anything for their services.

They became importunate, and two more of them were knocked down. A squad of soldiers from a surveying party happened to be near; the officer in charge of them was appealed to successfully, and the offenders were severely thrashed. Since then, there has been less rudeness to persons visiting the interior of the pyramid. About a quarter of a mile southeast of the great pyramid is the famous work of antiquity known as the Sphinx. It is much mutilated about the face, and is buried up to the breast in the sand. Its origin and meaning are unknown; volumes have been written about it, and for more than two thousand years it has been the subject of much learned controversy, of which I have not space to give even the outline. It has the body of an animal in a crouching position, and the head of a man. The body, a hundred and forty feet long, is formed of the natural rock, with pieces of masonry here and there to fill up the cavities. The head is cut out of the solid rock, and was originally about thirty feet from the top of the forehead to the bottom of the chin, and about fourteen feet broad.

Originally, it had a cap, wig, and beard; the cap is gone, but the wig is still there, and the beard, which has fallen, lies on the ground below. As it now stands, only the head, shoulders, and back of the Sphinx are visible, the sand being everywhere drifted and piled around the rest. There was, originally, a temple and altar between its paws, and there was a flight of steps that descended from a platform in front of the temple to the plain below.

The nose and most of the lips are gone, as though the Sphinx has been the party of the second part, in a prize-fight for the championship, but, with all its disfiguration, the statue retains much of the comeliness and grandeur for which it has long been famous.

What must have been its beauty before time and man placed their spoiling hands upon it, and before the encroaching desert heaped the sand around it, burying the platform, the steps, and the temples, and converting the whole scene into one of desolation! Could any pageant of modern times surpass the spectacle of the processions of Memphis, arranged after the manner of the most brilliant period of Egyptian history, and coming to offer adoration at the temple guarded between the paws of that figure hewn from the living rock and overshadowed by that mysterious and immobile face? Shall we ever know who was its architect, and what was the purport of this remarkable statue? Who will explain the riddle of the Sphinx? Proceeding southerly from the Sphinx, we reach a temple which was discovered and excavated a few years ago. It is lined with red granite, porphyry, and alabaster, and the stones of which it is composed are very nicely joined together.

Its history is unknown, but, from certain inscriptions and statues found there, it is supposed to owe its erection to Cephrenes, or Shafra, the builder of the second pyramid.

The Arabs broke off pieces of the stone to sell to us, but we declined to buy. Part of a statue lies buried in the sand; a statue of Cephrenes was discovered here, and is now in the museum at Cairo. There are many tombs and small temples all around the pyramids, but they have no great, interest after one has seen the great pyramid and the Sphinx. All the tombs, as far as known, have been opened and examined, and their contents, if of any value, carried away. Doubtless there are some yet undiscovered, but at present there are no explorations in progress.

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CHAPTER XLII—A VOYAGE UP THE NILE.—THE MYSTERIES OF EGYPTIAN ART AND WORSHIP.

Up the Nile in a Sail-Boat—Starting for the Cataracts—Advantages of a Drago man—A Tricky Lot—Frauds on Travellers—Our Party—Rather Cosmopolitan—Getting Ahead of Mr. Cook—Our Little Game, and How it Worked—A Bath with Spectators—Decidedly Cool—Getting Aground—A Picturesque Landscape—Last Glimpse of the Pyramids—Spending Night on Shore—Among the Ruins of Memphis—The Wonders of Egyptian Art—What Marriette Bey Discovered—Laying Bare a Mysterious Sepulchre—Ancient Egyptian Worship—Sacred Bulls and Beetles—A History Written in Stone—Bricks Made by the Israelites.

A JOURNEY to Egypt without a trip up the Nile is something like Hamlet without the melancholy Dane. Time and money are the insignificant requisites for the excursion, and it is necessary to be pretty well provided with both, in order to make the journey a comfortable one.

The proper way to do the Nile trip is in a sail boat or dahabeeah, as it is called there; this is the way that most travellers have made it, and the way in which all were obliged to make it until a few years ago, when steamers were introduced. For a dahabeeah voyage you must be prepared to take your own time, and not be restricted to getting back to Cairo at a certain date, unless you make that date so far distant as to cover all contingencies. You can hire the boat by the day or by the course; either way is not altogether satisfactory, as I have heard that no matter which mode you select, you will afterwards advise intending voyagers to take the other. If you go by the day, it is for the interest of the boatman to be on the river as long as possible, and he will invent all sorts of excuses for delays.

If you go by the course, you are hurried along as fast as he can crowd you, and if you wish to stop at a place while ascending the river, he will make a variety of objections to your doing so, unless there is an adverse wind or some other cause to prevent the advance of the boat. Most travellers charter the boat by the course, and, all things considered, this is the best plan,—with a stipulation for a certain number of days for stoppages at various points. From fourteen to twenty days delay are the ordinary stipulation, and the whole journey can be made from Cairo to the First Cataract and back in about fifty days. Three weeks must be added if the trip is prolonged to the Second Cataract. These periods are approximations, as the trip has been made to the First Cataract and back inside of forty, and in excess of eighty days, and to the Second inside of sixty, and beyond a hundred.

A few years ago the Egyptian government placed some steamers on the Nile, and arranged to run them to the First Cataract and back at stated intervals during the winter season. For a sailboat journey, much preparation is required, as you must hire a boat, stock it with provisions, engage a dragoman, and do a variety of things before you start, and the preparations will take from a week to a fortnight, according to circumstances. Sometimes a dragoman will take you for a stipulated sum per day, and supply you with boat and everything, but in this case you can be sure that you will not be well supplied, unless you pay a high price.

With the steamboat trip you have no trouble at all; you have only to buy your ticket, and go on board at the appointed time; you are fed, lodged, furnished with guides and donkeys, told when to admire, and how much you can admire, and have a given number of days, hours, and minutes in which to do everything. If no accident happens, you will be back in Cairo twenty days and five hours from the time of your departure, and will have been put through the Nile trip, as though you were a trunk or a bale of goods. You have a printed programme of the places to be visited, and of the time to be devoted to each, and also of the sights at each of those places. You are instructed not to stray from the party, but to follow the dragoman and observe the orders he gives.

There is in London a man, named Cook, who has been for a quarter of a century or more a dealer in excursion tickets for England and the Continent. A few years ago he extended his excursion business to the East, and latterly he has extended it to America, and around the globe. He has a rival named Gaze, and they are very savage on each other. Gaze says (in polite phraseology) that Cook is a liar, and Cook (in equally polite phraseology) says Gaze is a liar.

I have read both their pamphlets, and have come to the conclusion, when perusing their personal anathemas, that they both tell the truth.

Cook sells tourist and single tickets for almost everywhere, and Gaze does likewise. To travel on one of the tourist tickets is beautiful in theory, but to me, at least, a great nuisance in practice. I always avoid the tourist tickets when I can, but sometimes you find a line of transit monopolized by one of these enterprising agents, and are obliged to take his ticket or not go at all. Cook has managed to obtain the appointment of sole and exclusive, agent for the Nile steamers, and consequently the traveller who cannot spare the time and money for a dahabeeah journey, must patronize Cook.

To ascend by sail-boat to the First Cataract, and return to Cairo, will cost two persons about fifteen hundred dollars, and four persons about two thousand dollars. To go to the Second Cataract will cost about five hundred more in each case. If the party is larger, the charge is somewhat lower for each person. For these figures one can get a large, well-fitted boat, and be entitled to live with every possible comfort; lower rates can be made for smaller boats, and less luxury; the best terms I heard of when I was in Egypt, were sixty-five Napoleons (two hundred and sixty dollars gold) each for a party of five to the First Cataract, and allowing them fourteen days for stoppages on the return trip. I was several times offered a contract at seventy or eighty Napoleons each, for a party of five or six to the First Cataract, and for a hundred Napoleons each, to the Second. But this was late in the season (early in January), in fact too late to have a reasonable chance of reaching the Second Cataract. To go there, one should start in the latter part of November, or early in December, and for the First Cataract one should start in December. Early in the season the prices are high; later on they are more reasonable, as the dragomen and owners of boats begin to be doubtful of securing an engagement.

The price by steamer is forty-six pounds sterling, including everything except saddles for donkey-riding and one or two insignificant items, which rouse the temper much more than they deplete the purse. After you have paid an exorbitantly high price, and are told that it includes everything, you are then told that you must pay five shillings extra for a saddle, and eight shillings for a chair; then when you reach the First Cataract, you are told it will cost from two to five shillings more to see the cataract, although the advertisement specially says “The ticket includes the trip to the First Cataract and back.” These petty frauds are of course inseparable from the tourist business, as I never yet knew of a person who had bought a ticket to include everything who was not called on to pay something more. The nearest one can come to it, is on an ocean steamer, and on some of the river boats in America, but even there you are liable to be bled considerably in the course of your journey. You are sometimes very forcibly reminded of the story of the traveller, who said that the terms of a certain hotel out west were four dollars per day, with meals and lodging extra.

We were a party of thirty persons altogether, and included six nationalities,—American, English, French, German, Danish, and Italian.

Every place on the boat was occupied, and there might have been a dozen more, had there been any place to put them in. The boats leave every two weeks from the first of December to the end of March, and if at any time there are passengers enough to fill an extra boat, one is sent off.

Three o’clock was the hour for starting, so we left the hotel at two, sending our luggage on a charette, and taking donkeys, (for ourselves,) to the landing.

Gustave and I thought we would get ahead of Mr. Cook a little, by taking our own wine along, as the wines on the boat were extra, and sold at a very high price, and we found that we would save about fifty per cent, by taking wine from the shop, and paying Cook a shilling a bottle, the advertised price for corkage. So we bought three cases and put them with our baggage, but they were stopped on the deck of the steamer, by the Chief Steward of the line, who said he would examine the wine, fix a price upon it, and then charge us fifty per cent, on its value. We had about five minutes of very lively talk, which ended in our triumph, as we had taken care to bring a copy of the advertisement, with the proper paragraph ready marked for inspection.

It turned out that Cook had bought a large quantity of wine from the steamboat company, at the time he took charge of the business, and was anxious to sell it. Under such circumstances it was very natural that he should object to a passenger supplying himself with wine to drink on the voyage. It reminded me of the enterprise of train boys on American railways who neglect to fill the water-coolers in the cars, in order that they may be able to assuage the thirst of passengers, by selling them lemonade at five or ten cents a glass. Of course there were some passengers who came late, so that we were not off until half an hour beyond the appointed time. We amused ourselves, while waiting, by watching the movements of the people on shore. Troops of women and girls came down to the river to fill water jars, which they poised on their heads and then carried away. Occasionally a man came down to fill a pig-skin, and I observed that the men never carried water in anything else than a pig or goat-skin, while the women as invariably carried it in jars. In several places, men and women, some of them very scantily dressed, were washing clothes in the river, and some of the water for drinking purposes was scooped up unpleasantly near the scene of their operations. One man came to the bank about twenty feet from the stern of our boat, removed his garments, and took a bath with as much sang froid as if he were the only person present.

The human form divine, without superfluous adornment or encumbrance, is a frequent object in an Egyptian landscape. A student of living figures, a la nature, would here find a good field for his observations.

We had not been ten minutes under way before there was an alarm of fire, and the boat was stopped. It was nothing very serious, only the awning over the upper deck had taken fire from a spark from the chimney, and a hole about six inches across was burned in the canvas. A little while afterward we went aground, but we did not stick there long; half an hour later there was something wrong about the engine, and we had to run to the shore. None of these things wasted much time, but they didn’t promise well for the future. Luckily, however, they were the only events of the kind in the voyage, except that we went aground occasionally, and the bad beginning proved like many other similar affairs in life, a good ending.

We steamed past the city, watching the grey walls of Cairo, the domes and minarets of the mosques, the palaces and hovels, the gardens of the Island of Roda, the building containing the famous Nilometer, the green fields of the valley, the glistening sands of the desert, the yellow hills of the Mokattam, bounding the Lybian waste, the palm-trees stippled here and there, singly and in clusters, the dahabecahs, with their long-sloping sails and their trim and jaunty appearance, the native boats sunk deep with cargoes of food destined for digestion in the great stomach of the city, the camels and donkeys and buffaloes, on the bank of the river the half-dressed or almost undressed natives working the shadoofs to raise water for irrigating the land, the groups of natives scattered here and there at work or lazily idling away their time, and over all, the clear sky of Egypt, with scarcely a touch of color and with no mist or haze to keep back the rays of the sun. Away to the west were the pyramids of Gizeh, and south of them were the pyramids of Sakkarah, among the burning sands and overlooking the site of Memphis. Eastward were the hills that border the Lybian desert, and in the north was the spreading valley of the Nile. As we steamed on, the broad valley disappeared, and the hills seemed to shut in close upon the river. The great pyramids grew faint in the distance, and when the sun went down, they were just perceptible through the tops of the palm-trees.

We stopped for the night at Badresheyn, a village about fifteen miles above Cairo; we were to lie there until daylight, as these steamers do not run at night. From this point passengers on the dahabeeahs generally make an excursion to the site of Memphis, and to the Apis Mausoleum.

As for Memphis there is very little of it. A half buried statue lying on its face is shown you, and there are a few substructions and some heaps of ruins. There are some statues and statuettes in the Museum at Cairo, that were discovered at Memphis, and i the sites of two temples have been traced. I went to Memphis with a party early in January, and at that time the water was so high that most of the famous statue was invisible. This statue was originally about fifty feet high, and hewn from a single block of limestone; it stood in front of a temple and is supposed to be the one mentioned by Herodotus. Memphis was used as a quarry for supplying stone for the construction of Cairo, and hence the disappearance of the ancient city.

The ride from here to the Apis Mausoleum, or Serapeum as it is frequently called, is partly through a grove of palm trees and partly through the desert. This was only recently discovered, and rather curiously we are indebted to a passage in Strabo, for the mention of its site. M. Mariette, conservator of the Monuments of Ancient Egypt, found it in 1860, by one day discovering the head of a sphinx in the sand, and beneath the head was the body. Mariette then thought of a passage in Strabo which says, “There is also a Serapeum in a very sandy spot where drifts of sand are raised by the wind to such a degree that we saw some sphinxes buried up to their heads and others half buried.”

Mariette took this as a clue and went to work. The labor was most discouraging as the sand kept falling in almost as fast as it was taken out. An avenue six hundred feet long was cleared out, and sometimes it was necessary to dig the trench sixty or seventy feet deep. A hundred and fifty sphinxes were discovered, besides the pedestals of many others. The foundations of the temple were discovered and laid bare; many statues were found, and at last in 1861 the Apis Mausoleum or Burial place of the Sacred Bulls was opened. The avenue and the foundations of the temple are again covered with sand, and so is a portion of the Mausoleum, but the most interesting part is still kept open.

We left our donkeys at the house where M. Mariette lived during the excavation, and accompanied an Arab guide to the tomb. Entering through a door and descending some steps, we were in the vaults, which consist of parallel galleries, each more than two hundred yards long and united at the ends. The galleries are hewn out of the solid rock, and were evidently cut with great care, but there is nothing very remarkable about them. The wonderful feature of the place is the stone coffins in which the sacred bulls were buried. There are twenty-four of them in recesses, on the sides of the galleries, but never opposite each other, and they are about the heaviest things in the coffin line that anybody has ever seen. They vary a little in size, but the average may be taken at thirteen feet long, seven feet six inches wide, and eleven feet high.

Now stop and think before you go on; stop and think how large a room it would take to hold one of these coffins; well, each coffin is one solid piece of granite, from the quarries at Assouan, five hundred and eighty miles up the Nile, and is finished as nicely as you ever saw anything in the granite line. Four or five persons can sit comfortably inside, and one of them contains the

table and chairs where the Empress Eugenie, and the Prince and Princess of Wales took lunch when they came here. The lid of each coffin is in proportion to the rest of the work, and like it is of a single piece of granite. An effort was made a few years ago to remove one of the coffins, but it was unsuccessful.

The Egyptians knew some things that we don’t. We can’t move these stone coffins; they moved them along the Nile nearly six hundred miles, and from the East to the West bank, and put them in these galleries underground and exactly in the recesses where they wanted them, and they used them as the burial places of the sacred bulls of Memphis; the bulls that they worshipped as the incarnation of divinity.

All the region around here was a burial place, and many excavations have been made among the tombs. Thousands of mummies have been found, and doubtless thousands more might be discovered if further researches were made. It is four thousand years since some of these mummied gentlemen were pickled and preserved, and they have kept well; you may find them to-day as fresh as when they were planted, and they reflect creditably upon the mummy-sharps that put them up, and also upon the wonderfully dry climate of Egypt. I half suspect that the climate is responsible for the religious faith of the ancient Egyptians, and particularly for that part of it which bade them bestow so much care upon their tombs and the preservation of the body.

Had their climate been like that of London or New York, they would have constructed a different religion, as they would have known they could not successfully carry out the mummy part of it.

Not far from the Bull-Pits, as they are irreverently called, is a portion of a tomb of a very early date, which is known as the Tomb of Tih. The body of Mr. Tih was buried in the rock below, and the portion now visible is the entrance chamber to the establishment. The interesting feature about it is the mass of sculptures and paintings on the walls. Most of them are done in low relief, and very well done too. The drawing and execution show great artistic skill, and some of the groups evince a knowledge of perspective. The scenes represented are supposed to be incidents in the life of Tih; they represent him at home and in the field, and also at the chase. Tih was a priest who lived at Memphis about the Vth dynasty of the ancient empire; that is to say, about thirty-seven hundred years before Christ, or fifty-six hundred years ago. We wont be particular about a year or two. He is dead now, or at all events they buried him here. To describe all the scenes pictured on the walls of this tomb, would keep me writing for a week, and then I shouldn’t be through. In some of them Tih is hunting crocodiles and hippopotami; in others he is looking on, while his servants till the fields; in others he is superintending the building of a wall; and so on through all the incidents of a life of that period. The life of the Ancient Empire can be studied from the pictures on this and other tombs of the locality, and we can learn what they did and how they did it, what animals they used, and what most delighted them to engage in. Some of the pictures on the Tomb of Tih have a comic touch about them, and show that there was fun even so far back as fifty-six centuries ago.

There is one picture which shows some donkeys, brought up to be laden, and they are raising their heels in a miscellaneous sort of a way, and making things rather lively for those who are trying to control them. In another picture, where some men are fishing, one has fallen from the boat, and his friends are pulling him out of the mud. In another, a man has evidently been pulling at a rope, which has broken, and left him to fall in an attitude which is decidedly comical.

Evidently Tih was no slouch. He got up his tomb regardless of expense, and made it the best of the kind. The Egyptians often spent more money on their tombs than on their houses; they considered that they were only temporary occupants of their houses, but that the tomb was to be their eternal dwelling place. The tomb was the real home, and hence the effort to surround the occupant with the scenes he had witnessed on earth.

One of the pyramids of Sakkarah is built in degrees or terraces, is nearly two hundred feet high, and, next to Gizeh, is the largest of the pyramids. It is supposed to belong to the period of the First Dynasty of the Ancient Empire, and to be the oldest monument, not only in Egypt, but in the whole world. According to several archaeologists, it was erected five thousand years before Christ. It is built, not of stone, but of sun-dried brick, and though portions of it had crumbled, they have not altered the general appearance of the pyramid. Could you wish for better evidence of the preservative qualities of the climate of Egypt? This pyramid was opened in 1825, but nothing of consequence was found in it. I had had quite enough of climbing at Gizeh, and therefore did not attempt to ascend here, and I have not heard of any other person trying to climb it.

Some of the archaeologists say that the bricks of which this pyramid is composed were made by the Israelites, during their captivity. I shouldn’t be surprised if this was the case. I certainly don’t know that the bricks were not made by them.

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CHAPTER XLIII—LIFE ON THE BANKS OF THE NILE.—COPTS, JUGGLERS, AND THIEVES.—AMUSING EXPERIENCES.

Through an Arab village—Creating a Sensation—The “Doubter” alarmed—The li Professor perpetrates a hoax—The Egyptian Saratoga—An Oriental Post-Office—A queer Town—Specimens of Ancient Art—A wooden statue three thousand years old—A Coptic Convent—“Backsheesh, Howadji!”—Carrying money in their I mouths—Sturdy Beggars—An expert Swimmer—The Copts, who are they?—Skilful swindlers—Sugar Mills on the banks of the Nile—Egyptian Jugglers—A Snake-Charmer—Adroit Thieves—A Melancholy Experience in Donkey-riding.

I WAS up early on the first morning out from Cairo, and found the sun rising through a thin mist, which cleared away very speedily. Our dragoman went ashore to get a supply of milk for the breakfast table, from the village opposite, and Gustave and I followed him, and were soon in a tangle of narrow lanes, that were very crooked and would greatly puzzle a stranger to find his way among them.

Three or four times we brought up into culs-de-sac, or blind alleys, and had to force our way back and try again. Dogs barked and children gathered around us, and some buffalo cows took fright at the apparition of a couple of Europeans and fled into one of the houses. Chickens on a house top flew away, as if we had come to eat them, and some of the Arabs came out with expressions on their faces the reverse of pleasant, Evidently we had created a sensation, but not a very agreeable one.

The milk was soon obtained, and we obeyed the warning whistle and went on board. The voyage through the day was not specially interesting, as there are no ruins of interest on this part of the river, and the banks are rather monotonous. One hour was much like another, and the sights were nearly the same—crumbling banks, shadoofs, donkeys, camels and Arabs, sand-bars and islands, palm trees fringing the horizon or standing out in front of the grey hills of the desert, the sandy waste in the distance, and the river, covered more or less thickly with Arab boats.

These boats, when laden, were sunk rather deeply, and boards were placed along the sides to prevent the water breaking over. The “Doubter” was puzzled to know why they always put these boards at the sides of the boats. The Professor (this was the name we sometimes gave to Gustave) came to his relief with the following explanation:

“The Nile rises every year, and they put these boards up while the river is high to prevent the water coming into the boats, just as they build up the banks to keep the fields from being drowned out.”

The “Doubter” was satisfied for a moment, but only for a moment.

“But will the boats float on the water, whether the river is high or low,” he asked, “and if they do, what is the use of the side-boards at one time more than another?”

The Professor was equal to the emergency, and explained that the rise of the river was so rapid, and the boats were so slow in their motion, that the flood frequently overtook and swamped them. There was no further conversation on this topic.

One of the points passed early in the morning was Helwan, which contains some remarkable springs of sulphur. They were known to the early Egyptians, and it is recorded that one of the kings used to send leprous persons there, in the hope of curing them, or, at all events, of separating them from the rest of the people. They have been quite neglected in later times, until a few years ago, when their virtues were discovered and a bathhouse and hotel were erected there. They are much visited by Europeans and Turks, and some persons have been benefited by them. An omnibus runs there twice a week from Cairo, and much of the time the hotel is full. The place is in the desert, a little distance from the river, and the absence of shade trees, grass, or anything of the sort, makes the spot rather dreary for a lengthened stay. But the place is gradually growing fashionable, and when it becomes the mode to go there I fancy they will have more hotels and society enough to make the time pass without too much stupidity.

In the afternoon we reached Beni-Soef, and took a stroll through the town, which has a population of about five thousand, and can boast of a fairly-stocked bazaar. We saw nothing of importance in our walk that we had not already seen at Cairo. I strayed from the party and hired a boy to direct me to the post-office, where I posted a letter for America. The place was closed, but luckily I had the proper stamps on the letter, so that there was nothing to do beyond dropping the missive into the box.

The Egyptian postal department is quite well managed; the postmaster general is an Italian, and the most of his employés are of his nationality. The office at Cairo is in a large building, specially erected for it, and you have no trouble in finding the delivery windows and in obtaining the proper stamps, when you want them. They pay great attention to the delivery of letters to foreigners, and a placard in all the hotels informs persons about to ascend the Nile, that by leaving their addresses at the office, they can have their mail matter forwarded to any point on, the river they may designate. The steamboats carry letters to parties on dahabeeahs, and several times the boat was stopped to deliver such parcels.

The pyramid of Meidoon in this vicinity is supposed to be older than any of the pyramids of Gizeh, as it was probably erected by the predecessor of Cheops. All around it are tombs, and some of them have been explored with the most gratifying results. In one of them two stone statues, in perfect preservation, were found in 1872, and are now in the Museum at Cairo.

They belong to the Hid Dynasty, and are consequently more than six thousand years old. The work on them is admirable, and they are evidently likenesses, and excellent ones too. The eyes are made of crystal, with a piece of black porphyry for the pupils, and this combination gives them a remarkably life-like

appearance. I have several times lingered in front of them in admiration of their excellence, and one day, while I was standing there, the director of the museum said:

“You should see them late in the afternoon, when the slanting rays of light fall upon them; they sometimes look as if ready to step out and speak, and seem much more human than inanimate.”

The art of sculpture has not advanced as much as many persons imagine.

There is in the museum another statue of about the same age, but it is made of wood; it represents a man standing erect, and is about half the natural size, and as life-like as any piece of work that ever issued from a Greek or Roman studio. Its eyes are inserted within a closing covering of bronze, which serves for the lids; the eye itself consists of opaque, white quartz, with a piece of rock crystal in the centre, as a pupil; there is a glittering point beneath this crystal, so that the resemblance to life is almost perfect. The head and body are remarkably well executed, and evidently the figure is a good likeness of the person represented, who was not a king, or a divinity, but simply a sheik-el-beled, or village chief. The statue was complete when found, with the exception of the feet, which have been supplied, to enable the figure to be placed on a pedestal. Originally, the statue was covered with a slight coating of stucco, painted red and white, but this is nearly gone now.

On a bluff, on the east bank of the river, there is a Coptic convent, many of whose inmates are accustomed to visit passing boats, and beg for “backsheesh.” We had a visit from them; the first that was known of their coming was by a rush of two or three passengers to the after part of the steamer. They were followed by all the others then on deck, and the cause of the movement was seen in the small boats, which we towed astern.

A tall, muscular fellow, perfectly nude, was standing there and gesticulating to the passengers with the explanation, “backsheesh, howadji; ana Chritiané” (“a present, gentlemen, I am a Christian.”)

His dress, or the absence of it, caused the ladies to make a precipitate retreat, and to fall again to their reading, with an appearance of deep absorption. Soon another beggar joined the fellow, and we tossed a few coppers into the boat. They took the money in their mouths, as they had no other way of carrying it, and one of them got so much copper that it nearly strangled him. About a dozen made the attempt to board the steamer, and more than half of them succeeded. Remember that the steamer was going at full speed against the stream and you will wonder how they got on board. I watched one fellow, and here is his mode of operations.

These men swim, not after the Occidental manner, but with a hand-over-hand motion, analagous to the swimming of a dog. When a man wanted to board the steamer, he took a position near her supposed track, so that when she passed him the wheels were not more than a yard from his head. The instant the wheel had gone by, he struck out most vigorously towards the stern of the steamer, and by great effort was able to climb into the small boat, towing behind us. Formerly they came on the steamer itself, and rendered it necessary for the ladies to retreat to the cabins, but at present they can come no further than the small boats.

The Copts are supposed to be the descendants of the ancient Egyptians, but they have become so mixed with the Arabs and others, that it is hard to say what they are. They form about one-sixteenth of the population, and the most of them are Christians; the name is generally applied only to the Christian natives, but there are many Copts who are Mohammedans.

Their ancient language is almost lost; it is used in the churches for reading the prayers, in the same way that the Catholics use Latin, and the Russians the Slavonic. Their language in daily life is the Egyptian Arabic of the rest of the country; as a rule, they are better educated than the rest of the people, and are extensively employed as clerks and bookkeepers, not only in shops, but in various government offices. They have a cleaner and better kept appearance on the whole than the Moslem Arabs, and some of them are such great rascals, and show so much skill in swindling, as to indicate considerable familiarity with the principles of civilization.

The Copts were among the earliest converts to Christianity, but they embraced heretical doctrines, which received the denunciation of the Church in the sixth century. Several of their churches may be seen in the Fostal quarter of Cairo.

We passed in this part of the river a great many sugar-mills, most of them in full operation, as it was then the proper season of the cane-harvest. The boat stopped at Minieh long enough to allow us to visit one of these mills.

The mill is on a grand scale, the machinery for crushing the cane and reducing the piece to sugar is all of French manufacture, and is of the most perfect character. I was unable to ascertain what amount of sugar is made there, or at the other points, but the product ought to be very large, to judge by the size of the mills and their number. The mill at Minieh covers a large area, and is so arranged that from the time the cane enters the crushers until the dry sugar is ready, there is no occasion for lifting or handling the material, except in a few instances. The sugar culture ought to pay a handsome profit, but I was told that it is really a loss, and that the Khedive would gladly sell it out to private parties. The cause of this unprofitableness is due, I was told, to the frauds of the managers of the mills. Such a state of affairs is not confined to Egypt alone; there are many countries where government factories have been run at a loss, but when turned into private hands, have yielded a handsome profit.

One of the great wants of Egypt is the discovery of coal. At present fuel is costly, and all the coal used in the mills and on railways and steamers, must be imported, and, of course, at heavy expense. Explorations have been made on the upper Nile, and elsewhere, in the hope of finding coal, but they have not yet been successful. Small deposits have been found in isolated localities, but none that could be profitably worked. Lower Egypt does not offer much hope to the coal-searcher, but there are parts of the Soudan where the prospect is better. A wide coal-bed, accessible from the river, so as to ensure a low cost, would be a great boon to the country. There is very little wood for fuel, and among the peasants, dry camel-dung is extensively used.

After looking at the sugar mill, we strolled through the town of Minieh, and at the farther side, found a large crowd of people. They were looking at a juggler, who was performing a variety of tricks, none of them specially interesting, and compelling a couple of small boys to go through a comic dialogue, that evidently pleased the people very much, to judge by their immoderate laughter. The fellow had a large snake, which he wound around his neck, and had taught to dance, but his snake-charming was evidently the least of his performances.

Occasionally he allowed the snake to run on the ground, and when thus free, the reptile went around the circle with his head raised, and created a great deal of disturbance among the boys in the front row.

The snake-charmers are a peculiar class in Egypt; they will go to houses, and for a stipulated sum, will charm snakes from the walls or other localities, and they perform their work so well that nobody has ever succeeded in detecting them in a fraud I do not mean to say that they can find snakes where none exist; their art consists in enticing snakes that may be in a house to come out from their concealment, and allow themselves to be put in a bag and carried away. They do this by burning a sort of incense, and playing a doleful tune on a reed flute.

Our introduction to sight-seeing, at Beni-Hassan, in upper Egypt, was not prepossessing. There were donkeys on the bank, without saddles or bridles, and the worst donkeys that I ever saw offered for anybody to ride. The people were as bad as the donkeys, and presented a forlorn appearance; the inhabitants of this locality were formerly famous for their thieving propensities, and so bad were they in this respect that Ibrahim Pasha sent a military force to destroy their village and scatter its occupants. It would not be safe for a small-boat to lie there now over night, except with a very watchful guard. They beset us when we went on shore, and there was a crowd around me, with a dozen donkeys offering at once. I found a donkey that was fairly decent, but, while my back was turned, somebody else mounted him, and I was forced to take another and a poorer beast.

The donkey that I obtained must have been one of those possessed by the Beni-Hassanites when their village was destroyed by the Pasha’s order, forty years ago, and I am not sure but that he dated from one of the dynasties of ancient Egypt. He had much less hair than mud on his back, and I suspected that he passed his time in a mud-hole when not otherwise engaged. The saddle fitted him in a manner fearful and wonderful to behold, and there was some doubt as to whether it touched him anywhere. When I mounted him, he sat down in a manner perfectly natural for a dog, but not altogether so for a donkey. The result of this performance was to send me over backwards and leave me with my shoulders on the ground and my feet in the air. I found this position inconvenient, and also provocative of mirth in others, and therefore did not long maintain it. Even the donkey boy laughed, a proceeding which showed how little he knew of polite society.

The next time I mounted I sat on the beast’s shoulders and prevented his sitting down. But I could not prevent his kneeling, and I leave you to imagine the result. A regard for my personal feelings prevents my giving a detailed description of this harrowing tale.

It was nothing else, and I think I must have harrowed, with my hands, feet, and nose, not less than a square rod of land in the vicinity of that donkey, and I also harrowed him and the donkey boy, and would have served the bystanders likewise, if they had not been more numerous than I was. I didn’t feel a bit amiable.

At last we were off. I rode my donkey on foot most of the time, and we went along very well in this way, he walking about two yards behind me, and very amiable and patient, while I was as cross as a man whose shirts haven’t come home from the wash-woman.

We did about six miles altogether that day, and I think I walked altogether about seven miles. To sit on him was a toil worse than walking, and his best gait was when he was standing still. He was splendid on that part of the business, and I don’t think there was ever a donkey that could stand stiller than he.

He was about the size of a Newfoundland dog, so that when I mounted him, my feet touched the ground on both sides. And yet he was one of the best, or rather one of the least bad, of the lot. There were only two or three that surpassed him in personal appearance and strength.

Not one of our party will ever forget that donkey-ride to see the “Antiquities of Egypt;” and when at last the hardships of the journey were over, and we arrived at the Ancient Tombs—the handiwork of man centuries ago—we forgot our sore spots and lame bones, and our ill-nature gave way to curiosity and wonder at the scene around us.

These tombs, or grottos, are hewn in the solid rock, part of them on the bluff, fronting the river, and the rest in a ravine, or valley, that runs inland from the alluvial land of the Nile. The rock is a soft limestone, not difficult to quarry, and quite possibly when these grottos were made, the stone may have been softer than now. The excavations belong mostly to the eleventh and twelfth dynasties, and therefore are not as old as the pyramids of Gizeh and Sakkarah, but older than the temples and monuments at Thebes. They are old enough for all practical purposes, and are very much out of repair.

The walls are covered with paintings and inscriptions, that throw much light on the manners and customs of the time, and it would take more space than I can spare to describe them. Among the most interesting is a series of paintings representing the arrival of some strangers in Egypt; they were at first supposed to be Joseph and his brethren, but this can hardly be, as the tomb was made several hundred years before Joseph’s arrival. In one of the tombs there are representations of various tradesmen at work, and among them are barbers, shoemakers, painters tailors, glass-blowers, and goldsmiths. There are also people playing ball, wrestling, and throwing heavy stones, and in one place a couple of patrons of the prize ring are indulging in the noble art of manly disfiguration.

The tombs, or grottos, are square or oblong chambers, cut in the rock, and the most of them are so well lighted through their door-ways, that candles are not needed. In some instances several chambers are connected, and some of them have wells leading to pits, below where was the real tomb. They are well above the valley, out of the reach of the highest inundations, and from their front there is quite a pretty view. In front of some of them the rock is hewn into pillars and columns, that look at first glance as though brought from elsewhere.

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CHAPTER XLIV—ADVENTURES IN UPPER EGYPT.—FUN AND FROLIC WITH THE NATIVES.

Siout, the Capital of Upper Egypt—The Pasha’s Palace—An Egyptian Market-day—A Swift Boat—Going the rounds on a Donkey—Town Scenes—The Bazaars—Buying a Donkey—Tinkers, Peddlers, and Cobblers at work—A Curiosity Shop—Three Card Monte in the land of the Pharaohs—Fighting the Tiger—The Professor takes a Hand—An ignominious Defeat—A doleful Tale—A River where the Wind is always fair—The Temple and Tablet of Abydos—“Backsheesh” as a Medicine—Arab Villages in an Inundation—The Garden of the Valley—Fun with the Natives—A constant resource fora Practical Joker—Scrambling for Money—A severe Joke.

SIOUT, or Assiout, is a large town, with about twenty-five thousand inhabitants, among whom there are said to be not far from a thousand Christians. Its bazaars are quite extensive, and some of them reminded me of those of Cairo.

The town stands a couple of miles from the river, and there is a broad avenue leading to it, with a border of fine shade trees. The entrance to the town is through an old gateway, that is quite picturesque, and evidently formed a strong defence at the time it was erected.

Siout is the capital of the province of the same name, and the most important town of Upper Egypt. It contains some handsome mosques, several baths and some fine houses, all in the Arab style. It was formerly a great resort for caravans from Darfoor and other places in the interior of Africa, but latterly the trade with those regions is much reduced.

It was an hour before our mid-day meal when we reached the town, and immediately after lunch we mounted the waiting donkeys—much better than those at Beni-Hassan—and started out.

Our first visit was to some tombs cut in the side of the mountain, overlooking the valley; they are quite extensive, and were the burial places of Lycopolis, the ancient city, which occupied the place where Siout now stands.

The present city is modern, only about twenty-five hundred years old, and it has borne its present name through that period.

One of the effects of travelling in Egypt is, that you get in the way of regarding nothing as ancient that has less than three thousand years of age.

When you get back to Rome and Athens, the ruins there seem like those of a house of a first settler in Chicago or St. Louis. Nothing under thirty centuries will be regarded as antique.

It happened to be market day when we reached Siout, and as we rode into the town, we found the public square crowded with people. In the square there were large quantities of sugarcane, palm stalks, squashes, peas and beans exposed for sale, and the natives were squatted around them, or walking slowly about.

The edge of the square was fringed with a lot of solemn old Arabs, smoking their pipes and giving their whole minds to the business, as they squatted in front of the wall. Smoking is universally enjoyed by all classes of the Egyptians. There are many men who are rarely seen without a pipe in their hand, and many of the wealthy people may be seen on the street, attended by a servant, who solemnly walks behind carrying his master’s pipe. The flexible tube of the “Nargeeleh” is often seven or eight feet long, and its great length allows the smoke to cool before entering the mouth. Camels and donkeys were very numerous, and you had to look sharp to prevent being run over.

The Professor was nearly overturned by one of the camels, or rather by the load of sugar canes that protruded on each side of the animal’s back, and if I had not pulled him out of the way suddenly, he would have gone into a basket of eggs, with great detriment to both the merchandise and himself.

Just outside the town was the market place for donkeys, and dozens of these animals were standing there, awaiting purchasers. We enquired the prices of some, but the Arabs knew we were not likely to be purchasers, and so they named exorbitant figures. A fair donkey can be bought for twenty-five or thirty dollars, and a good one for forty or fifty Prices range considerably above that, but they are for fancy animals of extra fine appearance. Twenty pounds will purchase a donkey of much style and many fine qualities.

I have a confession to make, which is to be confidential. I gambled that day at Siout, and have felt badly about it ever since. The way of it was this.

The Professor and I were walking in the market place, looking at the crowd of country people and their wares, and at the tinkers, cobblers, and blacksmiths at work in the open air, at the cafés with their patrons smoking their long pipes and sipping coffee’ from little cups, at the peddlers of cakes and oranges, and other edible things, and at the general confusion and bustle that went on with the most perfect good nature.

While the Professor was bargaining for some old coins—he had’ a mania for them and was always ready to buy cheap—I made a table, and he threw the cards with the skill that comes from long practice.

I thought I could name the winning card, and so I ventured a copper piastre—about a cent—on my opinion. Many a man in America has thought he could name the card, and his faith has been lost in sight and cost him a great deal of money; I never ventured to try it among the sharpers of my native land, discovery which recalled California, Pike’s Peak, the Mississippi River, and Coney Island all at once.

An Arab of unusually dark complexion had a crowd around him, and was playing three card monte, the regular game, just as I have seen it many times in America. He was squatted in front of a strip of cloth, which he spread on the ground and used as a but I supposed that an Arab ought not to know how to deceive a New-Yorker.

To my surprise I found that my calculations were wrong, and my piastre went into the pocket of the card thrower. Then I tried to get back the money I had lost—-just as many another has tried to do—and my stake went the same way. I kept on a piastre or half a piastre at a time, watching the fellow closely, and thinking I ought to be equal to him in shrewdness. I must have tried as many as twenty times, losing altogether about a franc, and not once did I win.

I gave it up at last, and by this time the Professor came up and concluded to try his hand. He fared no better than I did, but kept on until he lost twice as much as I. We gave the fellow half a franc “backsheesh” for his skill, and credited him with being fitted for his business. If he lives and can find plenty of patrons, he will get rich in the course of time.

Most of the games of the Egyptians are of kinds which suit their sedate dispositions. Games partly or wholly hazardous are very common among all ranks of this people. The game of cards is almost always played for money or for some other stake, and is called by way of distinction “the game of hazard.” Persons of the lower orders in the towns of Egypt are often seen playing at this and other games at the coffee shops; but frequently for no greater stake than that of a cup of coffee. Many of them play chess, draughts, and backgammon. Their chess men are of simple forms, as they are forbidden by their religion to make an image of anything that has life.

Siout is famous for the manufacture of pipe-bowls, coffee cups, and other things out of a fine clay that abounds in the neighborhood, and most of our passengers supplied themselves in the bazaars. We had to bargain a great deal to save ourselves from being swindled, and even then we paid some pretty high prices. Another article they offered us, was fans of ostrich feathers, and their prices were about half what the same things would bring in Cairo. There are some manufactories of cotton goods at Siout, but the most of the articles sold in the bazaars come from other places.

At Siout we met the boat that ascended the Nile two weeks ahead of us, and was now on its return. We were regaled with stories of quarrels, and it seemed that almost from the day of starting there had been a row of some kind on board. The disturbance had not quite reached the point of pistols and coffee, but was very near it, and one of the passengers told me he expected to fight a duel before reaching Cairo. One of the misfortunes of these vexed parties is the liability to quarrel; persons are thrown so closely together, that there must be a great deal of forbearance and concession on the part of everybody to avoid trouble.

The river above and below Siout winds considerably, and sometimes the dahabeeahs are greatly retarded, going around the bends. Nature has very well arranged the navigation of the Nile. The general course of the stream is nearly due North; during the winter the wind blows almost steadily from the North, so that you can be quite sure of reaching your destination without great delay. You can sail up stream with the wind, and in going down the boat floats and is rowed just enough to give her steerage way.

When an ascending boat is becalmed, the crew is sent on shore with a tow rope, to which they are harnessed like so many oxen. They can make twelve or fifteen miles a day by this sort of work, and we frequently saw them engaged at it.

The first of the temples of ancient Egypt as we ascend the river, is the one known as that of Sethe I, and called also the temple of Abydos. All along the river above Siout, there are the remains of temples and traces of ruined cities, and every year fresh discoveries are made, which throw light upon the history of the country.

We landed at Girgeh—named after St. George of Dragon notoriety—to make a visit to Abydos. Girgeh was once at quite a distance inland, but the river has worn away the soil, so that the town has been reached by the stream, and a portion of it has fallen in. It was once an important place, but is now of little consequence, and the inhabitants were not particularly pleasing in appearance. They flocked to the bank with various things to sell, and the Professor was in his element, as he found a good supply of old coins. One man had a scorpion which he wished to sell, and after he had hung around me for some time, I offered him a piastre if he would eat the venomous insect. He indignantly refused, much to the amusement of the rest of the crowd.

It was about breakfast time when we arrived, and as the donkeys had been telegraphed for, they were already waiting for us. We started soon after breakfast, as we had a ride of three hours before us, and it was necessary to get to Abydos before the sun was at meridian.

The road lay through fields of peas in blossom, through other fields of beans, and others of sugar cane and doura stalks. Everywhere the verdure was thick and luxuriant, and remember that we were in the month of January.

We passed several villages and saw many groups of natives at work in the fields, and here and there we saw camels and buffaloes tied to stakes, and feeding upon the rich grass. An animal is tied where he can have a range of forty or fifty feet, and he is not moved until he has eaten the herbage down to the roots, so that there shall be no waste.

The villages consisted of little groups of mud houses, that possessed no attractions, and when one sees the dirt and general wretchedness about them, the surprise is that the inhabitants do not die before reaching a dozen years of age.

The villages are built on mounds to keep them out of the way of the inundation which covers all the flat country and makes it difficult to move about.

I had on this ride a donkey boy, who was the most persistent beggar that I ever encountered in all the course of my life.

When I started on a ride in Egypt, I made it a rule to inform the driver that I would give him a present when the journey was concluded, and this promise was generally satisfactory. If he asked for it at the start, I informed him that he would not get it till we were through with each other, and it was rare indeed that this statement did not quiet him.

The boy that drove my donkey from Girgeh began his appeal as soon as I mounted, and I thought to quiet him with the usual promise. He was silent for five minutes or so, and then he broke out with the same appeal; I repeated my promise, and scolded him him into silence; ten minutes later he broke out again, and this time I threatened to thrash him.

Next I did thrash him, and that insured peace for awhile; then I was bothered again, and thrashed him again, so that I had some pretty fair exercise for my arms.

He was not a large boy, so that I was entirely safe in thrashing him, and every time he renewed his begging, I gave him a cut with the whip.

We kept up this fun all the way to the temple, and after I had dismounted, he followed me with a further appeal, and indicated that he specially wanted to buy something to eat. I gave him some coppers, and when the lunch was spread I gave him a part of mine, in the hope of silencing him. But it was no use; the instant we started back to the river, he began again to beg, and I I thrashed him as usual. Halfway back he began to breathe short, his tongue protruded, and he lay down on the grass. Thinking something was the matter with him, I dismounted and felt his pulse, which seemed to be all right.

“Aos, eh?” I asked (“what is the matter with you?”).

“Backsheesh,” was the faint response, and he held out his hand to receive the cure.

I mounted and rode off, and he was up and after me without any sign of illness.

After that he did not try the sick dodge again, but he kept on begging all the way to the boat; and when I had given him a liberal gratuity, he asked for more.

If the beggars of the whole globe ever want to choose a king, I recommend them to hunt out this youth at Girgeh, and offer the crown to him, for he certainly deserves it.

The temple stands on the edge of the desert, quite near some palm trees, and in the midst of heaps of ruins. It was almost completely buried in the sand until a few years ago, when it was cleared out by M. Mariette, and the sculptures it contains were brought to light.

To the ordinary visitor, the attractive features of this temple are its massive proportions, the solidity of its structure, the care shown in all the details, and not least of all, the vast quantity of sculptured scenes and hieroglyphic records that abound everywhere. But the historian of Egypt fixes his eye on the eastern wall of a narrow passage way, leading from the second hall to one of the smaller chambers.

Here King Sethi, and Rameses, his son, are represented making offerings to seventy-six kings who have preceded them, the name of Sethi being the last of the list. The names are there, and apparently in chronological order. This is the famous tablet of Abydos, which has made so much sensation among the students of the history of Ancient Egypt, as it has enabled them to make up the list of the kings from Menes, founder of the First Dynasty, down to Sethi, the second king of the XIXth Dynasty.

Its discovery in 1865 has removed much of the mystery surrounding the old empire, and surpasses in importance any single discovery that has been made. The tablet of Thebes, now in the British Museum, is of far less consequence than this.

There is another temple not far from this, but in a much more ruined state. It was evidently of great beauty at the time of its construction, as the walls were lined throughout with alabaster, and covered with sculptures richly painted with colors that still remain.

All around there are tombs and heaps of rubbish, marking the site of the city and of its necropolis; and whenever the excavations are renewed on an extensive scale, we shall doubtless hear of some important discoveries.

We returned to the river at Bellianeh, the boat having moved on around the bend during our absence. It was late in the afternoon when we came there, and we were ready for dinner. Lunch had been taken among the ruins of the temple. While picking the leg of a chicken, and washing it down with the water of the Nile, I sat with my back against a column whereon was sculptured the figure of a king offering a tribute to one of the divinities of his time. He had had no chicken or anything else for many hundred years, but he stood there perfectly composed, and never once hinted that I ought to divide with him. He was a patient old oyster, and I wanted to shake hands with him at parting, but couldn’t find his flipper.

One of our favorite amusements at each landing-place was to make the natives scramble for money. They came down in large numbers, sometimes two or three hundred of them, and kept up a continual howl of “Backsheesh, O, Howadji!” that sounded very much like the murmurs of a mob. They gathered on the bank opposite the stern of the boat, and were ready to catch all the money we would throw to them. We had a supply of copper for just such cases, and by a judicious use of it, we made a franc go a great ways, and this was the way we would distribute it.

One of us would take a copper, and after balancing and aiming it several times, would give it a toss. A mass of hands would be stretched to receive it, and the crowd would sway in the direction of the falling coin. If it struck in the dirt, a dozen Arabs would spring upon the place where it fell, and there would be a scramble for it. Sometimes the struggle would be so fierce, that the cloud of dust raised thereby would completely conceal the combatants, and they would emerge with torn garments.

Our best fun was in tossing the money so that it would fall just at the river’s edge; the rear of the crowd would sway forward to seize it, and their swaying and surging would press the front rank into the water, so that in a little while we would have half the crowd dripping from an involuntary bath. The small boys were generally on the lookout for this, and removed their clothes at an early part of the performance, so that we had them in puris naturalibus. The men and girls were generally more modest, but not always so.

Usually we had half an hour’s sport before the departure of the steamer from a village, and sometimes the entire population, with the exception of a few dignified elders, joined in the scramble. At Bellianeh, the heads of the village thought the affair undignified, and determined to put a stop to it. Two of them appeared on the scene, armed with courbashes—whips made from hippopotamus hide—and caused a very lively scattering.

The boys were whipped into their clothes, and public decency was thereby protected, but only for a short time. The boat was to lie there half an hour longer, and we wanted the fun to continue.

So we sent one of the waiters to convey our compliments to the city fathers, and ask them to go home, and to emphasize the request with an offer of “backsheesh.”

They saw the point at once, each accepted a franc, and suddenly remembered that he had business elsewhere. In two minutes they had disappeared up a street, and we had the yelling crowd once more in front of us and once more naked. Evidently bribery is cheap at Bellianeh.

Just back of the landing-place was a heap of loose dust, like a small mountain. It was not less than forty feet from top to bottom, and the sides were at an angle of about fifty degrees. To project a copper into this heap was the height of our ambition, and there were only two men on the boat who could do it. When a coin was fairly landed there the rush was interesting. There was a lot of Arabs at the foot of the heap, and another at the top. Those below scrambled up, and those above scrambled down, and the cloud they created was something fearful; but luckily the wind blew it away from us. Sometimes they rolled in a tangled mass of arms and legs from top to bottom, and the youngsters who had just emerged all wet from the river were speedily veneered with the adhering dust. It may have been the ruins of an ancient city that they rolled in, and not impossibly the ashes of a king may have stuck to the body of one of these begging natives. Little they cared for that; they have no more respect for the old kings than we have for the beggars themselves.

The process of disrobing was not an elaborate one. A boy would peel himself in about ten seconds, as he had only a single garment, a sort of long shirt, to remove. This shirt is almost invariably made of blue cotton, like the material which we call “denims” in America, and such as the hod-carrying Celt and other laboring men generally use for overalls.

All the boys appeared to know how to swim, and they had no hesitation at rushing into the river. We had swimming matches among them, by attaching coppers to doura stalks and throwing them out into the stream, where they were instantly pursued and overtaken.

One of the passengers heated a piastre at the cook’s galley, and then threw it out; the boy who took it immediately dropped it, and it was seized by another and larger boy, who dropped it in turn. It didn’t burn them, but was just warm enough to feel uncomfortable.

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CHAPTER XLV—THE DANCING GIRLS OF KENEH.—THE TREASURES OF DENDERAH.

The Dates and Dancing Girls of Keneh—The Almeh and the Ghawazee—The Dalilahs of Cairo—Going to the Dance-Hall—An Outlandish Orchestra—The Drapery of the Dancers—The Cairo Wriggle—Curious Posturing—A Weird Scene—Dress and Undress—Miracles of Motion—A Fête at the German Consulate—Models for Painters and Sculptors—Arab and Nubian Nymphs—The Temple of Denderah—History Hewn in Stone—Cleopatra and her Portrait—The Fatal Asp—A Bit of Doggerel—The Coins of Old Egypt—The Professor’s Bargain—Digging for Treasure—Arrival at Luxor—Taking in Strangers.

THE first place of importance above Bellianah is Keneh, which stands about three miles inland from the river, and occupies a pretty situation. It is celebrated for its dates and dancing girls; we bought some of the former, and were invited to attend a performance of the latter at the house of the English.

We declined the invitation, for the reason that we had sent the dragoman to arrange a dance at the residence of the fair maidens and did not wish to impose upon the representative of Her Britannic or any other Majesty.

The dates were excellent, the best, in fact, I have ever tasted; they are packed in drums like figs, but are not pressed down into a solid mass like the dates we get in America. They are very sweet and soft, and each one of us laid in half a dozen boxes for his own use.

As for the dancing girls, a word in your ear. These ladies are not of the vestal sort, but, on the contrary, quite the reverse. They were known in Egypt in ancient times, and one can see pictures of them on the walls of some of the tombs in the valley of the Nile. In modern times they became so numerous at Cairo that Mohammed Ali banished them from that city and sent whole boat-loads of them to Keneh, Esneh, and other towns of upper Egypt. Those that he banished are not now on the stage of life, but their descendants or imitators are numerous, and have lent a sort of infamous fame to the places they inhabit.

Their Arabic name is ghawazee; they are sometimes improperly called Almehs, and there is a French painting of considerable celebrity which represents the Almeh dancing before a party of men.

The Almeh is a professional singer, and dancing is neither her profession nor practice; the ghawazee dance, but do not sing.

The dragoman had arranged the whole affair, and early in the evening we left the landing-place and travelled the somewhat rough road to Keneh. There were fourteen of us, and there were six nationalities represented in the auditory, or rather viditory, as we had come to see rather than to hear.

Under the guidance of the dragoman we went to an obscure house in a narrow street, and were shown up a flight of somewhat rickety stairs, and into a room that was anything but palatial.

There were divans on three sides of the room, and on these we were seated; the dancers and the musicians occupied the floor in the centre, and as soon as we were seated, the performance began. The music consisted of a couple of drums, shaped like a squash, with the large end cut off and covered with a piece of drum-leather, and of a sort of violin or guitar, and a kind of reed flute. There was also a tambourine, but it had less prominence than the drums, which were the real pieces de resistance. The drums were beaten with the fingers in rather a slow measure; the music was of a melancholy, barbaric character, and consisted mainly of time without much melody. Some of the musicians were men, I think only two of them, but as they were all squatted on the floor, and there was a general similarity of dress, it was hard to distinguish the sexes.

The dancing girls wore white dresses that flowed down to the heels and were very short in the waist On the upper part of the body is a jacket, cut very short, and frequently separated an inch or two from the dress below it. The jacket is sometimes richly embroidered, and I saw several dresses that were rather regal in appearance.

The head-dress consists of the natural hair braided in ringlets, and where this is small in quantity it is supplemented with store hair, as our own belles supplement theirs. In either case there is a liberal decoration of small coins and pendants braided into the hair or attached to it, and the display of jewelry is generally quite profuse.

The drums which were all the time kept in operation, was quite unlike anything in the ballet as seen in Europe or America. There was none of the dancing of the kind for which Fanny Ellsler and Taglioni are famous, and from an occidental point of view it was rather disappointing as a dance. But the strangeness of the scene, in many of its features, made up for the absence of saltatorial activity. Certainly the dance was a new The musicians struck up, and the girls—six in number—took their positions in a circle.

At the sound of the music they began to move about the room with a sort of gliding motion, accompanied by a curious wriggle of the body at the hips, while all the rest of it remained still. It was a motion from side to side performed quite rapidly, and with due deference to the sound of one to us, and the dancers were of a type unknown in America. Their dress was strange, and stranger still were the musicians squatted on the floor and keeping time with that monotonous barbaric sound.

Two or three Arabs were peering in at the door, the room was wholly Arabic in character, and the only occidental suggestion was the party of spectators squatting or sitting on the divans. There was a dim light from half a dozen candles, and outside a small fire occasionally sent up a weird flash. The scene was a fine one for an artist.

For a quarter of an hour the dance went on, and gradually the movements became more and more excited. Then there was a pause and then a re-commencement, and then another pause at which the ladies retired for a few moments while we took a fresh filling to our pipes or lighted fresh cigars. When the dancing girls returned they were in a much lighter costume than the preceding one, a costume that permitted one to see the full development of the form, as it did away entirely with the long dress and with other garments that hindered the movements. I doubt if the manager of any theatre ever dared to go quite as far in dressing or undressing his ballet troupe as did the manager of the Ghawazee at Keneh. With the exception of their head dresses of false hair and jingling coins, and their necklaces and rings, the whole half dozen of girls didn’t have clothes enough about them to fill a snuff box. You could have sent their entire lot of garments by mail with a single postage stamp.

Immediately on their re-appearance the music re-commenced, and this time with a more vigorous measure, so that the scene became enlivening.

This time the movements of the dancers were more free, and they whirled about in a narrow space with such rapidity that there was quite a maze of the performers. There was a repetition of the gliding, whirling, and twisting motions combined, and sometimes they were all performed together. We looked on attentively for half an hour, and now and then as the air was getting stifling from the occupancy of a small room by so many persons we called for an adjournment and went out into the light of the moon. As we passed by the German consulate we heard the sound of music, and one of the Germans of our party led the way inside-The consuls of France and Germany are brothers and their consulates are in one building; during the Franco-German war the consul for Germany was also consul for France, and is supposed to have performed his duty impartially, especially as there is very little duty for him to perform.

The place into which we were ushered was a large hall, and the same sort of dance given in honor of some German visitors was going on. The girls were more richly dressed than at the performance we had just witnessed, and the room being much larger they had more space for their movements. The musicians were more numerous, and as there was a better light in the room the scene was brighter. But the spectators were sitting on chairs instead of divans and the host was dressed a la European, with the exception of the everlasting fez which covered his head.

Altogether the scene was much less Oriental, and it lacked the careless abandon that had made one of the attractions of the dance at the home of the Ghawazee. So after a short stay we thanked our host, the Consul, and returned to the boat.

Many travellers have praised the beauty of the dancing girls, and several artists of note, among the Germans, have visited Egypt to paint them. I had formed such a picture of their beauty that I was rather disappointed at the reality. Of the six that danced before us two were positively ill-looking, and two others, though not uncomely in features, had grown rather too fat to be attractive. The other two were pretty and well formed, and had the others been like them, or had we seen only these two we might have shared the feelings of many who have gone before us.

Of the two beauties one was a pure blooded Arab, and the other evidently of mixed blood Arab with a streak, and a broad streak too, of Nubian. Their forms were exquisite and would have filled the eye of the sculptor of the Greek Slave. Their limbs were full and rounded, and every muscle so far as we could see was of the proper development. Their eyes were full and liquid in their tenderness, and the long lashes set them out like a lustrous frame. The dark skin was smooth and the necks were flung from side to side in a shower of ebony spray as its wearers glided and swung around the apartment, where we looked upon them. Fortunate indeed had we been had these been the only dancing girls to meet our eyes at Keneh.

Everywhere through Egypt water is filtered in large jars, some of them holding nearly a barrel, and it is carried on the heads of

rently soft as velvet, and had a freshness that not all the paint and powder of the French toilet can imitate.

A pleasant smile played constantly around the mouth and eyes and seemed to run from the one to the other, the luxuriant hair decked with golden ornaments fell in copious folds around the plump and well-formed lin women in lesser jars that contain from four to six gallons. It is brought to the table in bottles holding a quart or more, and whenever and wherever you call for water it is served in these bottles and never in a pitcher.

The filtering jars and the drinking bottles come from Keneh, or rather the most of them do, and the large jars come from Balias, a town a few miles above. They are made of a peculiar clay which is mixed with the ashes of halfa grass and turned on an ordinary potter’s wheel. They are dried in the sun, and when complete require a little soaking to remove the taste of the earth. They are very porous, water passes easily through them, and when placed in the open air the transformation and constant evaporation that follows keep the contents very cool.

We met many rafts of these ballasee on their way down the river, and some large ones were tied to the bank at Keneh. The men in charge of the rafts are obliged to remove the water from the half immersed jars every few hours to prevent their absorption of enough to sink them. The same kind of drinking bottle can be found in Spain and in Mexico, and also in some of the South American countries. They are used all through Egypt, and their manufacture employs a considerable number of persons. The man who introduces them in the Mississippi valley will confer a boon upon the inhabitants of that region.

An hour’s ride from the river on the side opposite Keneh is the temple of Denderah.

Compared with the other temples of Egypt, this one is modern as it was built less than two thousand years ago, at the time the Romans held possession of the country. Egyptian sculpture had long been on the decline and the figures are far less graceful than those of a much older period, but the architecture retained its grandeur, and one cannot admire too much the magnificent proportions of the halls and columns of Denderah, especially in the grand portico and in some of the inner apartments.

The temple is the best preserved that has yet been discovered; its walls and columns are all in place and the roof is almost entire, so that it presents the best specimen of a complete temple. It contains a zodiac which was the subject of much controversy on account of its supposed antiquity, but a careful reading of some of the surrounding inscriptions has exploded the theory that the ancient Egyptians were the authors of the zodiac.

On the side wall of the temple is a portrait of Cleopatra, which is interesting for the reason that it is cotemporaneous with the existence of that estimable but warm blooded lady, whose habits were not such as to make her a model for the guidance of young women of the present day. We looked at the portrait for the beauty for which she was renowned but could not find it though we all admitted that her face was not unhandsome. Her figure does not possess the grace of her Greek portraits, and altogether the picture was a disappointment.

On several places on the walls of the temple there are sculptures representing the asp, the serpent which was once worshipped as a divinity. Asp-headed gods were frequent among the Egyptian sculptures, and their worship extended over a long period. And it was by one of these serpents that Cleopatra, of whom we have just been speaking, was stung to death. The event is recorded in a pathetic poem which begins thus:

“She took a nasty, pison snake,

And hid it in her gown,

It gave its little tail a shake

And did its job up brown.

She went into her little bed,

In dreadful agony;

Then tore her chignon from her head,

And followed Antony.”

Denderah was a big thing for the Professor as he was able to buy there an abundance of coins. He bought a lot of them, about a quart altogether, for a couple of francs; they were covered with rust, mould, and verdigris, but they were coins and he paid little more than what they were worth as old copper. He was a good deal of a coin-sharp and understood their value, and when he looked them over on the boat he was so happy that he wanted to go back again to buy more. He said he wouldn’t take five hundred, no, not a thousand francs for the lot, and he was ready to dance with joy. And I add this by way of foot note, that when we returned to Cairo he had the coins cleaned and examined by a numismatist. Every coin was pronounced genuine and some were of silver. Most of them were of a kind

that is abundant and consequently they had not much value, but there were several very rare specimens. One in particular was so rare that only one like it was known to exist in Egypt, and it was worth any sum of money that a seller would ask and a buyer would give.

He was sure they were genuine, and he scouted the notion that they were fabrications for the reason that he had paid less than it would cost to fabricate them. These coins were found around Denderah, and we saw the natives digging in the rubbish in several places in search of them. Occasionally a native makes a good find, but he never knows its value, and will sell his prize cheaply. A coin collector who knows his business would do well to make the voyage of the Nile.

We had half a day’s steaming from Keneh to Luxor, and turned some pretty bends in the river where the scenery was quite picturesque. We passed several dahabeeahs on their way up stream and greeted them with our steam whistle and by dipping our flag to which they responded by dipping theirs. Every dahabeeah carries a flag showing the nationality of the parties on board; this is an inflexible rule, and a very good one, and often leads to friendly acquaintance among persons of similar nationalties. The steamboat saluted every dahabeeahs; she was not proud because she was a steamboat, and we were glad to perceive that the others were not proud because they were dahabeeahs.

In this part of the river we observed a great number of pigeons flying around; these birds abound all along the Nile but are specially numerous in this locality. The pigeon houses are built over the dwellings and are two or three stories high; they have a likeness to the battlements of old castles, as they are narrower at top than at bottom, and the entrances for the birds have a strong resemblance to port holes. Branches of trees are put near the holes to assist the birds in alighting, and they give rather a curious appearance to the houses. Hundreds of these pigeons can be seen in the air at once, and sometimes the flocks are very large. The birds are kept for the sake of their manure; pigeon dung is the only kind of manure used on the fields in Egypt, and it is quite an article of commerce.

In Cairo a great many pigeons are kept on the roofs of houses; they fly around and pick up their food where they can find it, and their owners make a very fair revenue from the sale of the manure as well as from that of the birds. Mohammedans do not eat them but the large number of Christians in Egypt ensures a good market. The hotels have them very often in their bills of fare.

It was about noon when we reached Luxor and tied up to the bank in front of the American Consulate. There was a crowd of donkey-boys, guides, and miscellaneous citizens to meet us, and as soon as we were on shore they surrounded us at once.

The Professor was happy as he found plenty of old coins, but he did not find them as cheap as at Denderah. The most numerous speculators were the dealers in antiquities, such as fragments of mummies, pieces of coffins, scarabées, and bits of marble and other stones cut into the shape of ancient statues.

They have an odd way of offering their stuff to you; without saying a word they come up and hold out the thing they have for sale, and sometimes if it is a skull they hold it disagreeably near to your face. Ask the price and then make an offer, and be sure to make the offer small enough. They refuse and turn away; in a few minutes they come up again with the same thing and offer it in the same manner as if they do not know you have seen it before Refuse and refuse again; they depart, or at all events put their things in their pockets at each refusal, but they return again in a few minutes.

There was one man with a string of scarabees and another with a miniature bust of one of the old kings that I think offered their wares as often as once in five minutes during all the time I was accessible to them. They do not talk under such circumstances unless you talk first; they glide silently in front of you, and then hold up what they have to sell, as though endeavoring to secure your admiration.

The articles mostly dealt in are scarabee,—those imitations in hard stone of the Egyptian beetle that are found in many of the mummy coffins. Some of them make pretty finger rings, and I have one that makes a capital seal, as it bears the signet of one of the kings of the XIXth Dynasty. They are of all sizes, from the small stones placed on the finger of a mummy or strung into necklaces, up to some as large as a goose egg, and even much larger. Some of these large ones are simply marvellous. They are of very hard stone,—porphyry, feldspar, basalt, serpentine, carnelian, and the like, and are covered on the under side with finely cut hieroglyphics, generally passages from the Ritual of the Dead.

There is one in the museum at Cairo that I would walk twenty-three miles to own. It is about as large over as a two-cent piece, and the back is cut as neatly as that of the beetle it imitated, while the under side is covered with fine hieroglyphics. And the stone is green feldspar, one of the hardest things in the world for cutting, and how they managed to finish it so beautifully is a mystery.

The Arabs at Luxor have a liberal supply of these scarabees but they are nearly all modern imitations. They have some genuine ones for which they ask a high price, but it sometimes happens that a really good one is sold for a trifle. They declare that every-thing they have is “antika” and ask proportionate prices, but you are not expected to offer anywhere near the sum demanded.

When a man exhibited something that I thought I would buy, I asked his price. If he said two pounds, I might offer sixpence, and very often they would come down to one or two shillings for something that they originally asked two pounds for. I bought a scarabee for a franc that was offered to me for thirty francs, and one of my friends paid two francs for something for which one hundred and fifty francs was the first price.

In other countries an article is supposed to be worth somewhere near the price put upon it, but any such rule is erroneous in Egypt. I have no hesitation in offering a silver piastre, (five cents,) for a scarabee whose holder demands two pounds; in New York or London a similar offer would be an insult, but in Luxor it is not so regarded.

A great many people are foolish enough to buy these antiquities at the prices demanded, and the Arabs in this business are able to make a good living. They are reputed to make many of the articles, and I was told that others are made in Cairo, and others in Birmingham—like the famous Waterloo relics. One fellow was pointed out as the owner of a fabrique d’ antiquities and we asked him to show us his shop. He denied having any factory, and then we offered him five francs, ten francs, a napoleon if he would show us through it. He finally grew indignant and said:

“No, no, no; not for ten napoleons will I let you see it.”

The fabrications are very skillful, and even the experts are sometimes deceived by them. The safest parties to deal with are the Consuls; they are all merchants of antiquities, but even they are not always to be relied upon, as they have families to support and human nature is weak. What wonder if a consul who has to maintain dignity and an office, should take advantage of circumstances and drive a sharp transaction whenever he finds a rich flat.

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CHAPTER XLVI—LUXOR, THE CITY OF GIANTS.—AMONG THE MUMMIES OF ANCIENT THEBES.

Luxor on the Site of Ancient Thebes—A City with a Hundred Gates—Enjoying a Consul’s Hospitality—An American Citizen of African Descent—A Dignified Rhinoceros—Karnak—A City of Wonders—Promenading in an Avenue of Sphinxes—A Gigantic Temple—Monster Obelisks—A Story in Stone—A Statue Weighing Nine Hundred Tons—The Sitting Colossi—A Singing Statue—Mysteries of Priestcraft—Lunching in the Tomb of Rameses—A Wonderful Treasure—How They Made Mummies—A Curious Process—The “Doubter” and the Mummy Sellers—The Judge Comes to Grief.

LUXOR is now an insignificant town of four thousand inhabitants, occupying the site, or a small portion of it, of the ancient city of Thebes, from whose hundred gates twenty thousand armed chariots could be sent to the battle-field. What a’ melancholy decline from the days of Thotmes and Rameses to the present!

A crowd of dirty Arabs, and a collection of hovels, with here and there a house having some pretence of respectability and comfort are the Thebes of to-day. Were it not for the ruins that lie around us we should have only to write “Thebes was,” and the story of to-day would be complete. But the city which fills bright pages in the history of Egypt was too great and glorious in her time, and the monuments she built were too stupendous to be easily removed. So grand were her temples that the work of destruction was an enormous one, what then must have been the labors of erection! In the present town of Luxor there is little to be seen beyond the temple which is now greatly fallen and of which much of the sculptures lie buried. There is no effort made to remove the rubbish that lies around the walls and upon all the floors; in one part the English Consul has his office, and in others the Arabs have built their mud hovels among the columns and against the sculptured walls. The magnificence around them has not served in any way to elevate the thoughts of these natives; they live in a superabundance of dirt, and the contemplation of the works of art ever in their sight has been no more to them than to their chickens or donkeys. They regard the ruins solely as a source of profit, and they persistently beg from strangers who come to visit Thebes. Most of the Arabs believe that the strangers who come here are pagans, and that they make pilgrimages to Thebes, Denderah, and Esneh, just as good Moslems make pilgrimages to Mecca.

We devoted an hour to calling on the consul, where we were treated to pipes and to coffee, and were seated on the divans that filled part of the official rooms. The American Consul is of a dark hue, something more than a mulatto, and one of our party whose notions were formerly in sympathy with slaveholding, was rather disinclined to accept the hospitality of a gentleman of African descent. But we pacified him by the information that we were in Africa and approaching the region where white men were at a discount, and with this view of the case he subsided and smoked his pipe in silence.

The “Doubter” was rude as he always was when among gentlemanly natives, and as he had not the vice of smoking he wondered what we were staying for. The Judge reproved him for his incivility, and for a minute or two there was a fair prospect that the consul would be able to collect a fee for suppressing a row in his own office. During the turmoil the Professor and I slipped out and called upon the German Consul, who was as dignified as a rhinoceros in a menagerie. He speaks hardly anything but Arabic, and knows of only one man—Bismarck—in Germany and of only one city—Berlin. The Professor passed as a resident of Berlin and a relative of Bismarck, and with this view of the case he was most cordially received. The American

Consul speaks English quite fairly. The vice-consulate was formerly held by Mustapha Agar, who is also English Vice-Consul, and his removal has soured him somewhat so that he is not over-polite to Americans. He is the oldest consul at Luxor, and one of the oldest residents, and has grown wealthy in the service of other countries than his own. He has been so often petted by travellers and praised by authors who have been here, that he has become spoiled, and has the pomposity of a turkey-cock. He deals in scarabees, mummies, coins—everything that you like,—and he showed us as did the other consuls, quite a collection of antiquities. They can furnish you with the head of a king or the foot of a princess at short order, and as for old coins the Professor found enough at Luxor to set up a museum of numismatics.

We hired donkeys and went to Karnak—something more than a mile from Luxor—and we went not only once but three times.

Karnak is more than marvellous; to do justice to it one requires to have a dozen or so superlative words specially invented for the place. You remain silent in contemplating it as you find that you have no word to express your feelings; you are sensible that to speak of it in ordinary terms would be like the cockney’s expression of “neat” applied to Niagara, and though I am intending to make the attempt I am satisfied that I shall fall far short of portraying the full grandeur of the scene to the reader.

As you approach the temple you enter an avenue of ramheaded sphinxes (huge fellows carved in stone), on opposite sides of the avenue. Formerly this street extended all the way to Luxor—six thousand feet away. What a splendid promenade it must have been! Only a few of the sphinxes are here now, and of those every one has been more or less mutilated. Passing the avenue you reach a pronaos, or pylon,—a gateway with two enormous towers large enough of themselves to make a temple. There were no less than six of these entrances. Just to give an idea of their size I will give the dimensions of one of the peristyles. Its total length is three hundred and seventy feet, its depth is fifty feet, and its height one hundred and forty feet. The temple faces the river, and the towers can be seen from a long distance. One of these fronting the river is partly fallen, but the other is nearly perfect. A detailed description of the temple at Karnak would be dry reading, and I will simply state that from end to end the length is eleven hundred and eighty feet, and that it is about six hundred feet in breadth. The whole was surrounded by a wall twenty-five feet thick and from sixty to a hundred feet high. All this space inclosed by the wall is filled with ruins of an architecture of the most magnificent character. In one place there are the fragments of a fallen obelisk, and close by it is a standing obelisk ninety-two feet high and eight feet square at the base, the largest obelisk now known. There is another, seventy-five feet high, a little from it, and there is another obelisk standing at Luxor, the mate of it having been removed to Paris. The French government removed the Luxor obelisk only after many attempts and failures. The obelisk at Karnak—the great one—was given to the English government, but they never attempted to take it away.

How did the Egyptians manage to move these masses of stone from the quarries at Assouan, and to put them in place? I give it up.

Do you know where is the most stupendous hall in the world? It is in the temple at Karnak. It is three hundred and twenty-nine feet long and one hundred and seventy feet broad; it has down its centre, twelve columns, each sixty feet high (without counting capital and pedestal), and twelve feet in diameter. Then besides these there are one hundred and twenty-two other columns (arranged in fourteen rows, seven on each side of the central rows), forty-two feet high and nine feet in diameter. Thus there are one hundred and thirty-four columns in this great hall, and all of them are covered with sculptures. There was once a roof over the hall, but it is mostly gone now, and some of the columns have fallen. Seven of us, with our outstretched hands touching each other, were just able to encircle one of the great columns. Compared with this hall of the temple, the Parthenon at Athens becomes of dwarfish size. All around are stones of great size that once formed parts of the temple; everything around is so great that the stones do not appear large till you stand close beside them, and then you realize their extent and your littleness. As at Abydos and Denderah the walls of the temple, the faces of the pylons, the columns, the pillars, the sides of the encircling wall, everything and everywhere, were covered with sculptures. The most of the sculptures were battle scenes, but there were many that represented offerings to the deities. In the historical pictures the campaigns of the kings were represented, and one who has time and patience to study them can read the story of a campaign. Here the king is marching out with his army, and next he is attacking a fortress; next he is routing the enemy and driving them across a river; next he is returning in triumph, and there is a long series of the cities he passes through on his return.

On the front wall of a tower of a pylon, the king is represented striking off the heads of a group of captives, and these representations are so frequent as to make it pretty certain that the Egyptians were accustomed to offer human sacrifices. The hands, and sometimes other portions of the bodies of the slain enemies, are cut off and piled before the king; and some of the pictures are of a kind that could hardly be reproduced in a family album of the present time. The king is nearly always represented of much greater stature than those that surround him, and the Egyptians were generally so doubtful of the faces of their rulers reaching posterity, that they were careful to engrave their names on most of the pictures and to detail the incidents described.

This temple was not the work of one but of several kings, and there is a chronological difference of two hundred and fifty years between the earliest and latest sculptures. There is much dispute as to the antiquity of the edifice, but it is generally conceded to have been completed not less than fifteen centuries before the Christian era.

One of our visits was made by moonlight, and the effect of light and shade, especially in the great hall, was beautiful beyond description, and therefore I forbear attempting to describe it We disturbed several jackals and bats, the only occupants of the ruins.

There is an Arab village close to the temple, but it does not extend into the great structure. The water of the Nile enters the ruins at the time of the inundation, and is eating away the base of the columns, so that several have fallen from its effects. The Egyptian architects, while producing magnificent superstructures, were curiously negligent of the foundations.

On the west bank of the Nile are several temples, the most prominent of them being the Memnonium or Rameseum, and Med in et Aboo.

Both were on the same general plan of Egyptian temples, and second only to Karnak in greatness; there are other temples around here—half a dozen or more—and each has its peculiar historical and religious sculptures covering the walls.

In the court yard of the Rameseum is an overturned and broken statue of Rameses III, the builder of the temple. It was destroyed by the Persians at the time of the invasion of Egypt, but they did not succeed in obliterating it. The figure was a sitting one like many of the statues of Egypt. The throne and legs were reduced to comparatively small fragments, but the upper part, broken at the waist, lies comparatively perfect and enables us to judge of the great size of the figure. It is not sufficient to say that it was the largest statue ever hewn from a single block and transported two or three hundred miles. It is calculated to have weighed (when entire) not far from nine hundred tons. It was nearly twenty feet across the shoulders of the statue, and the foot of the figure was eleven feet from toe to heel. From the shoulder to the elbow was nearly five yards, and the other measurements were in proportion.

On the plain toward the river and quite a distance in front of the Rameseum are the sitting Colossi. They were made to represent one of the Kings, and one at least was cut from a single block. The height of the figures is about fifty feet, and they originally had pedestals ten feet high. The soil has risen considerably since their erection and is now about seven feet above their base.

There they sit as they have sat for centuries looking out upon the plain of Thebes and across the Nile to Luxor. What stories they might tell were they possessed of memory and the power of articulation; more than thirty centuries of the world’s history rest behind those stony lips; more than three thousand years have come and gone since first these forms were fashioned.

History and tradition say that sounds issued from it when the rays of the rising sun fell upon its face; one authority says these sounds were musical, and others that they resembled the snapping of a bow-string or a blow upon a piece of metal. The statue was very fastidious in its youth, and many times when distinguished persons came hands of man and placed where we find them to-day. The city they once adorned has crumbled to dust and disappeared, and they sit alone and uncared for, save when some passing stranger drawn by curiosity comes and gazes irreverently upon them and glances at the ground they have watched and guarded so long.

One of these statues is the famous Vocal Memnon which orators and poets have frequently drawn upon for illustrations and from distant lands to see it, not a sound could be heard from it. Sometimes when Grand Moguls like the Emperor Hadrian and other heavy swells came along it was more complaisant, and ventured to let itself out, and on a few occasions it even sounded twice, a circumstance which ought to have been regarded with more suspicion than the absence of a date to Mr. Pickwick’s note announcing his non-return to dinner.

There can be but little doubt that the sound was a trick of the priests, as there is a stone in the lap of the statue and behind it is a niche where a person could be completely concealed from the view of the crowd below.

We hired an Arab to climb up and strike the stone, and we had the performance not only once but half a dozen times, all for half a franc for the entire party, or less than a third of a cent each. Some things are dearer now than in the olden time, but the Memnon business is cheaper. Two thousand years ago you had to be there at sunrise and sometimes you had to go two or three days in succession, before you heard the sound, as the priest who struck the stone would happen to be off on a drunk or neglecting his business. But now a little “backsheesh” will settle the matter at any hour of the day and it would keep on a week if you were willing to pay for the fun.

We spent a day among the tombs of the Kings, which are in a valley four or five miles back from the river; there are lots of tombs there, fifty or more, some of them being the burial places of the kings, and others those of queens, of priests, of common people, and even of cats, dogs, ibises, crocodiles, and other beasts, birds, and reptiles.

I have said fifty, I might better have said there are four times that number as nobody seems to know how many tombs there are in the hills back of Thebes, and every one admits they are very extensive.

The most interesting are the tombs of the Kings, and also those of the priests; we entered half a dozen of the first and one of the latter and made as thorough an investigation as was possible. Some were discovered by Bruce and some by Belzoni, and some by more modern explorers. Every few years a fresh tomb is opened and important revelations are made. Any person who wishes to dig among these tombs can obtain the permission of the proper authorities and an officer will be sent to superintend his work and see that he gives a proper account of the treasures he finds. Most of the tombs that have been opened have been stripped of their contents and nothing remains except the mural sculptures and paintings. Some of these are of a most exquisite character and show that the Egyptians were well advanced in the art of drawing. The tombs consist of long passages cut into the rock, some of them horizontal; some descending and some with one, two, or it may be half a dozen lateral chambers and apartments. Passages, halls, and chambers are all decorated with the same profusion as are the temples, and in some of them the colors are laid on with great care. Egyptian life and its manners and customs, the arms and implements in use, the employments of the people, their religious belief, the ceremonies of burial, and many other things can be learned by a study of these tombs, and they have probably been more useful in this respect than have the temples, which are generally devoted to religious subjects and incidents in the life of the King whom they commemorate.

We lighted them up with candles and magnesium wire; we wandered through the halls and chambers, and we took lunch one day in the entrance of a tomb which was once the post-mortem house of Rameses III. Did the old fellow ever suspect that a party of travellers would in the present century devour cold chicken and ham sandwiches, and smoke cigars and pipes and cigarettes at his door?

Most of the tombs that have been opened have been found rifled of their valuables, and the modern explorer has to be contented with the granite coffins, and is very fortunate if he can find a royal mummy. M. Mariette discovered and opened in 1859 the coffin of Queen Aah Hotep, which contained a remarkable collection of jewelry.

She is thought to have been one of the Queens of the XVIIIth Dynasty, and to have lived about thirty-five hundred years ago. There were bracelets and other ornaments of lapis lazuli, carnelian, feldspar, and turquoise set in gold, and there was a gold chain nearly a yard long and framed of fine wire intricately woven. The collection was in the Paris exhibition of ‘67, where it took the prize. The French jewellers said it would be difficult for them with all their skill to mend this chain if it were broken, and they admitted that the goldsmith’s art in the days of Queen Aah Hotep was little inferior to that of to-day.

The body of an Egyptian was prepared for burial by the removal of the brains, intestines, and viscera generally; it was then soaked in nitre for seventy days, and afterwards filled with salt and aromatic herbs. It was then carefully bandaged, every finger and toe being separately wrapped, and there is not a bandage known to modern surgery with which the Egyptians were not familiar. The bandages were soaked in preservative gums and the body thus carefully prepared was placed in a wooden coffin, shaped to the body, and covered with hieroglyphics, which were generally passages from the Book of the Dead. Then this was placed in a stone coffin, this again in a larger one, and sometimes the whole was enclosed in another. The number of the coffins and the care of preparations depended upon the rank and wealth of the deceased very much as do the funeral ceremonies of today. The jewels of the deceased were enclosed with him, and this practice has led to the opening of so many tombs since the decline of the ancient Empire.

You can buy whole mummies, or parts of them, of the Arabs, around Thebes, but they are all the remains of common people. The supply of Kings was limited from the outset and has long been exhausted. The demand is far greater than the supply. I asked repeatedly for a king or for a live mummy, but in every instance was told that I could not be gratified I would give a good deal for a genuine monarch, and was in the market for one all the time I was at Luxor, but in vain.

All the way back to the river the Arabs kept near us trying to sell antiquities, but we were not inclined to purchase. One fellow had a mummy head that had a remarkably fresh look, and I was told by the dragoman that when the supply of mummies runs short, the natives dig up the skulls and arms from their own cemeteries and offer them for sale. I accused this merchant of endeavoring to dispose of the head of his grandfather, but he denied the imputation, and said it was a real mummy. I promised him a piastre if he would walk by the side of the “Doubter” and continue to offer the head to him all the way back to the river, and to assist the offer by holding the skull in front of the old fellow’s face.

He earned his money, and the “Doubter” afterward said that he never saw an Arab so persistent as that one. I was sorry that we could not hire the native to go along with us and keep his bone-yard ever in view of our crusty and penurious companion.

The road from the tombs to the river winds among the limestone hills, and in the middle of the day the heat is great. Rain falls here very rarely, but there are indications of great torrents through these ravines at some remote day.

Rain was evidently not unknown to the ancients, as the temples of Denderah and other places were supplied with water spouts to carry off the showers that evidently fell there.

We crossed the river in a small boat. The water is shallow at the shore on the western bank and we had to be carried to and from the boat. The Arabs transported us with ease, and were rewarded very fairly for their work, but of course they wanted more. Some of them handled their burdens very carefully, and others tumbled them in with little ceremony. The Judge came in over the side much like a sack of wheat, and went into a lump at the bottom of the boat. He was rather disconcerted at the performance as it rended his already dilapidated garments and caused him to seek the seclusion of his own room as soon as we were on board the steamer. Another of the party was dropped into the water but was saved without any worse mishap than a good wetting and a provocation to profanity.

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CHAPTER XLVII—A VISIT TO A HAREM IN UPPER EGYPT.—LIFE AMONG THE NUBIANS.

A Visit to a Harem—Among the Daughters of the Nile—How they Looked and What was Done—Painted Eyelids—The Use of Henna—A Minute Inspection of Garments—Mustapha Agar “At Home”—Arab Astonishment—A Dinner a l’Arabe—Fingers vs. Forks—An Array of Queer Dishes—Novel Refreshment—Dancing Girls—Truck and Decker at Luxor—More “Ghawazee,” Pipes and Coffee—“A Love of a Donkey”—Song of Arabs—Arab Cruelty—A Nation of Stoics—Endurance of Pain—Among the Nubians—Ostriches, Arrows and Battle Axes—A Nubian Dress—A Very Small Dressmaker’s Bill—A Scanty Wardrobe.

THE ladies of the party did not accompany us to the Tombs of the Kings, as the day was hot and the ride a long one. Besides, they had what was more attractive to them, an invitation to visit the harem of the English Consul.

I volunteered to accompany them, but my escort was declined, for the reason that gentlemen were not admitted any more than they were to the studios of some of the fortune-tellers of New York. When we returned to the boat, they were in great glee, and it was not long before we had all the details, or at any rate, all that they chose to give us. We hardly recognized them, as their eyelids had been stained with henna, after the Arabic manner, giving a great prominence and lustre to the eye. The result is the same as that obtained by actresses and others, who apply red paint around the eyes and not upon the lids.

I will try to give the story as nearly as possible, in the words of One of the Fair Visitors. I Endeavored to Induce Her To Write It out for Me, But She Shrunk from The Effort As Something Herculean, and All My Prayers Were of No Avail.

“We went to the consulate,” said the narrator, “and there we found Mustapha Agar waiting for us. We walked from there to his house, which is quite pretty when you get inside, and has a sort of garden on a balcony, and from this balcony we went into the harem. The consul staid outside with Mr. ————— (the husband of one of the visitors), and we were shown in by one of the slaves. The consul’s son, who speaks English, went in for a few moments and interpreted, but for the rest of the time we had to talk by signs, as the women spoke nothing but Arabic, There were half a dozen women, some the wives of the consul, and some the wives of his son, but we didn’t know which were which.

“They saluted us in Arabic as we entered, and asked us to sit down on the carpet with them, and we squatted as best we could. There were divans at the side of the room, and a rich carpet in the centre, and we sat on the carpet more than on the divans. The women wore the loose dress of the Arabs and had no veils on their faces; one of them, a young girl of fifteen or about, had a very richly-embroidered dress, much better than that of any other, and I thought she must be the favorite of either the j consul or his son. They began at once to examine us, to look at our faces, our boots, our clothing, and everything, and we returned the compliment by examining them. What most excited their curiosity was Mrs.———‘s hair. They pinched it and looked at it in all sorts of ways, took it down, and were not easy till they had satisfied themselves that it was natural, and even then they kept examining it and feeling it in their fingers every few minutes until we came away.”

I remark by way of explanation that the lady referred to was English, and her hair was of the pure blonde type. It was of a golden hue, rich and glossy, and was no doubt the first of its kind that these Arab women had ever seen. I do not wonder that their curiosity was aroused.

“Before we knew what they were about, they had our heads in their laps and were staining our eyelids; they wanted to stain our finger-nails and tattoo our chins, but we declined. Several times they renewed the request, but we thought it was enough to have our eyelids stained in this way. They had their hair loose, with the exception of bands around their heads; the young girl had a rich head-dress, with a great many pieces of gold attached to it, and her hair was of a jet black. They served us pipes and coffee, and were much surprised that we didn’t smoke. We drank the coffee, and they made us take a few whiffs from the narghileh, and were much amused when Mrs. ————— swallowed some of the smoke and began to cough.

“We staid there about half an hour. When we came away they embraced us, but did not kiss us, and they didn’t let us off until they had taken another pinch at Mrs. —————‘s hair. They followed us to the door and intimated by signs that they would like to go to see us on the boat.”

The next evening a party went to dine a l’Arabe at the Engglish consulate, but as a part of them were masculine they were not admitted to the harem. The party was seated on the carpet, and the table was about two feet high, just high enough to be comfortably reached from the seat on the floor. Hands were washed before and after the meal, and sometimes between the courses, the water being brought by a servant and poured upon the hands after the Eastern manner.

There were about twenty courses in all,—soup, meats, and pates of various kinds,—and all were eaten with the hands except the soup, for which spoons were supplied. The consul presided at the table, and his sons supervised the service, which was quite rapid. The bones were piled on the table in front of each guest, and were afterward removed. Some of the viands were so hot that one or two of the guests found their hands somewhat burned. There was an abundant supply, enough for a party four times as large, and the cooking was said to be very good. The most prominent article was a turkey which was brought on whole, and from which each person tore off what he wanted. There were no knives or forks at the table, and some of the visitors made rather awkward work getting along without them.

All ate from the same soup-dish without hesitation, and luckily they did not have time to continue at it long. The etiquette was to take only a few mouthfulls of each dish, and whether good or bad, the dishes were not allowed to stay. Roasts, entrees, pâtés, pilaufs, succeeded each other rapidly, and before the party was aware that the end had come, the host gave the signal by rising and the table was removed.

After the disappearance of the festive board, there was an Oriental dance. Four gliawazee with their musicians were brought into the parlor, and the dance began at once. Pipes and coffee had been served the instant the table disappeared, and the party took its position on the divans where they could look on with complaisance.

The Orientals understand dancing in its true sense, and cannot comprehend why we should caper through a waltz or a cotillion, when we can hire somebody to do it for us.

“Why don’t you make your servants do this?” was the wondering inquiry of a Chinese official, when invited to a ball given by some of the English residents of Hong Kong.

The day at length arrived for our departure from Thebes, and as the boat steamed away from the landing the crowd on shore sung a farewell chorus, the consuls fired guns and pistols, and the whole town in fact seemed bent on making as much noise as possible.

The market for antiquities declined rapidly before our departure, and articles were offered at less than half the figures that ruled on the day of our arrival.

We tied up as usual during the night, and next morning about breakfast time we were at Esneh, a town of six or seven thousand inhabitants and containing a temple of which only a small portion has been cleared out. The remainder is quite covered by the houses of the modern town, and is thought to be quite extensive. The portico, the only portion visible, is reached by a stairway which we descended to the floor. The columns are well preserved but the sculptures are injured somewhat, and in places are hardly legible.

Most of the features of the gods are broken, and this is the case in a large number of the temples of Upper Egypt. The injury is attributed to the Persians, but a large portion of it is due to the early Christians, who sought in their religious zeal to destroy the evidences of pagan worship. In some temples they plastered over the sculptures, and thus unintentionally preserved them. The plaster has been removed in modern times, and the sculptures are found in excellent condition.

Esneh is famous, like Keneh, for its dancing girls, and there is quite a colony of them at the southern side of the town. We visited their quarter in the evening, and were beset by the young ladies with appeals for “backsheesh” and invitations to visit their households and witness a dance.

There are several cafés on the bank just above the river, and we found quite a collection of Arabs in them. They were smoking their pipes, sipping coffee, and singing and looking very dignified and disinclined to move. The Arab song may be best described as a monotonous chant, consisting of about four measures and a chorus like a prolonged “ah-ah”. They sing everywhere, but more especially when at work together. Men engaged in rowing or pulling a boat are constantly singing; one sings the measure and the whole join in the chorus. The song may be on any subject, like popular airs everywhere, and frequently are extemporized by the singers. I was much struck with their resemblance to the songs of the negro deck hands on the Mississippi steamers, and also to those of the Canadian voyageurs on the St. Lawrence and its tributary rivers. The boatmen of the Volga and the Dwina have also similar songs while rowing or pulling their craft.

One of the prettiest things I saw at Esneh was, not a girl, but a donkey. He was a beauty, and I would have given more for his photograph than for that of any human being I saw there. His color was white, but according to the Arab custom his hair was closely shaven. He was plump, round, and large; his ears were perfectly erect, and his trappings were rich and evidently selected with taste. He belonged to the governor, who was pleased at the admiration bestowed upon his property, and stood approvingly by while one of the artists of our party took a sketch of the animal. I ventured to ask how much such a donkey would be worth.

“I paid twenty pounds for him,” replied the governor, “when he was a year old. I have since refused a hundred pounds, and I should refuse two hundred if anybody should offer it.”

Above Esneh there are several places containing the ruins of temples, of which the most interesting is that of Edfou. Only since 1864 has it been visible; up to that time it was covered by rubbish and the houses of the modern village so that only the propylon tombs were visible.

The long-accumulated rubbish had helped to preserve it so, that when it was cleared out the sculptures were found in better condition than in most other temples.

The temple greatly resembles that of Denderah and has numerous small chambers that were used for the storage of valuable articles used in the sacred ceremonies.

The sanctuary contains a sanctum sanctorum, a large cage cut from a single block of granite, and once enclosing the hawk I which was the emblem of the divinity to whose worship the temple was dedicated.

That night while we lay at the landing, one of the ladies came to induce us to perform a work of charity. She had discovered that the cooks in preparing chickens for the table did not kill the birds until after plucking the feathers, and sometimes a featherless chicken would get loose and run around the bank. We went out to the place on shore where the picking was in progress and found that her story was correct. We called the dragoman and had him explain to the Arabs that such a custom was not pleasing and that hereafter they must kill the chickens before picking them. They were astonished at the suggestion, but promised compliance. The Orientals are thoughtlessly cruel, and this arises partly from a lack of nerves in their own organization. A Chinese will, sit in a chair or ride in a cart that would be torture to a European, and a Turk or an Arab will sleep on a hard bed when he could have an easier one if he chose. A native of any part of the Orient is less sensitive than an Occidental to a cudgeling, and he is quite indifferent to the sufferings of animals. No dog in London or New York would be regarded as indifferently by the inhabitants of those cities as are the dogs of Constantinople and Cairo by the Mohammedans. They beat their donkeys and, buffaloes with great cruelty; one of the unpleasant features of riding on a donkey is the pounding that the brute receives from his driver, and when he is doing his best he will frequently get a blow that would floor a man. Many of the donkeys have large sores where their hips have been punched with sharp sticks, and these sores are kept open by a continuance of the punching. I don’t think the Arabs are intentionally cruel; it is difficult to make them understand the sufferings of animals when they themselves are quite indifferent to pain and discomfort.

As we approached Assouan the sandstone formation disappeared and granite came into view. Along this part of the river there were numerous boulders in the stream; they change their places through the action of the current and make navigation somewhat dangerous. A steamer that left Cairo after we did struck one of these boulders while going at full speed and was of no use as a steamboat after that. Passengers, crew, and baggage were saved, but the boat went to what Mr. Mantalini would call the “demnition bow-wows.”

We made several windings with alternate views of fertile ground and sandy desert, rocky hills and huge boulders, and a last on a rounded summit there appeared a dome that overlookes Assouan. We made a sharp bend to the left passing more boulders and with the island of Elephantine on our right swung in towards the town and made fast to the bank.

The river seemed to end here; we were enclosed in an amphitheatre variously composed of sand, granite, town, and verdure from which there appeared to be no egress save by the route through which we had advanced. Steam was blown off and the upward journey of our boat was ended. As we went on shore we met a crowd of Arabs and Nubians with ostrich feathers, Nubian dresses, old coins, arrows, silver ornaments, battle axes and the like for sale.

The Arabs were like those we had seen down the river, but the Nubians were another lot.

Their black skins were covered with scanty clothing, and their woolly hair was done into small ringlets about the size of lead pencils and plentifully saturated with grease. To trade with them required as much bargaining as with the Arabs, and sometimes a little more.

They had high prices for their ostrich feathers, but we gradually brought them down. One article dealt in here was the whip of hippopotamus hide which goes by the name of courbash. Some of the passengers bought each a dozen or more; I contented myself with one whip and a cane as I did not wish to affect the market.

It was late when we arrived so that there was only time to take a stroll through the bazaars which contained nothing of special importance.

Assouan is a town of about four thousand inhabitants, and occupies the site of the ancient Sy-ene. At certain seasons it presents many curious features as the trade from Nubia centres there and the product of the Soudan and Central Africa which has been sent by camels around the cataract is reloaded here. Ostrich feathers, ivory, gum arabic, lion and leopard skins and the like are the chief articles from those countries, and may sometimes be seen at Assouan in considerable quantities.

In front of Assouan and in the middle of the river is Elephantine’ Island, so named probably, because no elephant was ever seen there. We went there in a small boat rather rickety and leaky in its character, and which stuck in the mud at twenty feet or more from the land. The island has been famous through many hundred years, and once contained a city of considerable importance. We visited the ruins of this city and also of a temple which was destroyed about fifty years ago to furnish stone for the construction of some modern buildings in Assouan.

The island has a fertile appearance and is kept in a luxuriant condition by several sakkiehs which are worked not by men as on the lower Nile but by oxen. A pair of oxen turn a wheel by which a quantity of buckets are made to lift water from the

river. We visited one of these sakkiehs, but the driver did not greet us kindly as his team took fright at our coming and nearly wrecked the machine before he could stop and pacify them.

The inhabitants of the island are all Nubians, and as we landed they flocked down to meet us. They offered for sale old coins, agates, spears, arrows, and Nubian dresses, but they did not drive a lively trade. The Nubian dress is not an extensive affair; one of the passengers bought one and put it in his coat pocket, and several were offered to me that weighed only a few ounces each. They were the costumes of ladies, not of men, and consisted of a fringe of strips of leather like shoe strings attached to a strap. This strap was fastened around the loins, and the strings hanging down constituted the dress.

This custom is quite unfit for the climate of America; it is better for Nubia where the thermometer ranges high during the entire year and rain never falls. I saw several young ladies dressed in these airy garments and they did not appear at all uncomfortable.

If a lady wants to get herself up gorgeously, she adds a string of beads to the above apparel and her toilet is complete. One dusky maiden of about sixteen summers took off her string of beads and proffered them for sale. I gave her a franc for the lot and she then removed the rest of her apparel and proposed selling it for two francs.

What a country,—where a feminine wardrobe in the height of fashion can be bought for three francs!

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